Gay City News 2011 PRIDE Issue

Gay City A m e r i c a’ s L a r g e s t C i r c u lat i o n Gay a n d L e s b i a n N e w s p a p e r !

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Your free LGBTQ Newspaper june 22-july 5, 2011 Volume TEN, issue 13

S E R V I N G G A Y, L E S B I A N , B I A N D T R A N S G E N D E R E D N E W Y O R K • W W W . G A Y C I T Y N E W S . C O M

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At the June 19 Queer Rising Protest in Union Square, Christine Chiaffarelli said of her partner, Nora Lopez, “She’s my wife, no matter what.”

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Human Rights /3

Subterfuge in Syria Why we wanted to believe the Gay Girl in Damascus

BY MICHAEL T. LUONGO

I

t was such a great story, it couldn’t have been made up.

Now, of course, we know better.

In 1993, in the early days of Internet chat, when people were already pretending to be something they weren’t, a New Yorker cartoon showed two dogs on a computer, captioned, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

The update might now say “When you’re pretending to be a Middle Eastern lipstick lesbian in peril, no one knows you’re a bearded, straight 40-year-old man named Tom.” The Gay Girl in Damascus (http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com) is a blog full of heroism and drama. And what a heroine Gay Girl –– imaginary name Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari ––was.

Not just an Arab woman, but an open lesbian in a repressive dictatorship.

Part of what made Amina’s story plausible was that her being Syrian-American seemed to give her a modicum of freedom unavailable to a local. A recent Arab Spring panel at Columbia University’s Social Media Conference also pointed out that blogging in English is a form of protection. Bloggers using Arabic are more likely to be jailed, tortured, or killed. I’ve personally met a few who’ve suffered the first two indignities.

But forget all about that.

Gay Girl in Damascus is really Tom MacMaster, an American Middle East expert who loves Syria and lives in Scotland. He was tracked down by the Washington Post and blogger Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada. (http://electronicintifada. net).

The blog’s credibility cracked when Croatian Jelena Lecic, living in London, told the BBC the photos were of her, telltale mole and all. Stolen identity aside, she was frightened for Amina. Soon we knew the blog’s IP address was in Scotland and the ruse broke down.

Network rerouting and purposely false identities and impressions are not without precedent, especially regarding Syria. The best known subterfuge artist is Malath Aumran, the online persona of hazel-eyed media darling Rami Nakhla, a Syrian blogger in Lebanon, whose work against the Syrian government has been featured in CNN and on other news sites.

But an openly gay blogger in repressive Syria?

The fact is that is not without precedent, either. A visit I made to Syria last year –– where I did travel writing, met with people about the Arabic version of my book “Gay Travels in the Muslim World” during a multi-country Middle East book tour, and interviewed gay Iraqi refugees living there –– was facilitated by a Damascus blogger running

Jelena Lecic, a Crotian now living in London, whose picture was used by Tom MacMaster in his phony blog http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com.

him, or if he himself was a spy.

Skepticism and suspicion are healthy in the Middle East.

My friend said he didn’t know Amina, though he’d heard of her blog when I asked him as news of it hit the US. His own skepticism should have convinced me, much as we all wanted to believe. But in the back of

The Syrian government did not care about homosexuality. It was only when social organizing veered into politics that gays got crushed.

Amina’s stories mixed the personal and political, providing an emotional window into the revolution, explaining to an international audience the nuances of Syria. She talked about the beauty of Islam and the plight of Palestinians. Beyond her own words, reader comments on Islam and homosexuality show a level of sophisticated thinking too many Westerners assume does not exist in the region.

a gay website. The site was in English with his picture; having met him I can attest it is really him.

I was surprised at his openness, but he explained to me that the Syrian government did not care about homosexuality.

It was only when social organizing veered into politics that gays got crushed. Plausible, yet I still wondered if my friend had friends in high places protecting

my mind, I was swayed by the activists’ success in staying well below the radar, something I witnessed on my trip to Damascus. Though some of her blog entries gave me doubts, Amina was not, to me, unthinkable.

My Syrian friend, for example, told me not to buy a cell phone SIM chip, that he would give me one. At first, I was suspicious of this suggestion until I realized he would probably provide one

the government could not track.

Facebook was illegal then in Syria, but most got around this by using, of all things, Saudi Arabian proxies, Internet addresses enabling them to bypass the official Syrian government website blocks. The social networking site has been legalized since the revolution began in Syria, but probably so authorities can monitor dissidents. We delight in narratives about the Facebook and Twitter revolutions sweeping the Middle East, forgetting that technology also leaves a trail of evidence to be used against activists. The Onion jokes about that sort of surveillance happening here, but it already is used in the Middle East.

Technically, I was in Syria illegally, a journalist on a tourist visa, investigating without a government monitor. It was the only way to get work done.

It was, of course, also a form of subterfuge, dangerous at times.

I got my best lesson in the nature of surreptitious activity –– one that, for me, lent the

most credibility to Amina’s blog –– from the difficulty I had locating a gay rights group, the Syrian Same Sex Society, or SSSS, whose website, www.ssss-net. com, exists to this day. During my trip, the site was blocked within Syria and clearly the activists were monitored. (Ironically, gay porn sites were not blocked.)

Despite my efforts, I was never able to meet group members. There was a bar popular with gay men, including foreigners, in the center of Damascus.

Almost every day, someone told me the group’s leader would be there. I always just missed him, I was told. This man was alternatively described as Syrian, Syrian-American, Danish-Syrian, Danish, Irish, blond, redheaded, and brown-haired, with various names. No one really knew who he was, and maybe he was more than one person.

The bottom line is that in Syria, evading notice means safety, and I figured that was the case with Amina.

I finally tracked down the guy behind the SSSS site, ironically, in the course of investigating the Amina story for this article.

He now lives outside Syria, and despite the high visibility of the group’s website, he said no other journalists had contacted him during the Gay Girl saga.

In fact, the man, who still wants his identity obscured, said that he had not even been contacted in connection with Western articles several years ago that claimed to have interviewed him.

Beyond alerting me to the pervasiveness of subterfuge, my visit also made clear how fragile Syria is and how spies are everywhere. In Aleppo, I was touring a church ruin with a local gay man when seemingly out of nowhere, his neighbor appeared. My friend panicked, explaining later the man was from the secret police.

In another gay Aleppo outing, we were spooked by a secret policeman who sat next to us and glared as we spoke.

In fact, I found Syria just plain creepy. This is not some-

c

Syria, continued on p.66

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ATRIPLA Important Safety Information and Indication INDICATION ATRIPLAÂŽ (efavirenz 600 mg/emtricitabine 200 mg/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate [DF] 300 mg) is a prescription medication used alone as a complete regimen or with other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection in adults.

ATRIPLA does not cure HIV-1 and has not been shown to prevent passing HIV-1 to others. The long-term effects of ATRIPLA are not known at this time. People taking ATRIPLA may still get infections that develop because the immune system is weak or other conditions that happen with HIV-1 infection.

Do not stop taking ATRIPLA unless directed by your healthcare provider. See your healthcare provider regularly.

•Have ever had seizures: Seizures have occurred in patients taking a component of ATRIPLA, usually in those with a history of seizures. If you have ever had seizures, or take medicine for seizures, your healthcare provider may want to switch you to another medicine or monitor you. •Have ever had mental illness or use drugs or alcohol.

Contact your healthcare provider right away if you experience any of the following serious or common side effects:

Serious side effects associated with ATRIPLA: •Severe depression, strange thoughts, or angry behavior have been reported by a small number of patients. Some patients have had thoughts of suicide, and a few have actually committed suicide. These problems may occur more often in patients who have had mental illness.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION Contact your healthcare provider right away if you get the following •Kidney problems (including decline or failure of kidney function).

If you have had kidney problems, or take other medicines that may side effects or conditions associated with ATRIPLA: • Nausea, vomiting, unusual muscle pain, and/or weakness. These cause kidney problems, your healthcare provider should do regular blood tests. Symptoms that may be related to kidney problems include may be signs of a buildup of acid in the blood (lactic acidosis), a high volume of urine, thirst, muscle pain, and muscle weakness. which is a serious medical condition. •Other serious liver problems. Some patients have experienced • Light-colored stools, dark-colored urine, and/or if your skin or the serious liver problems, including liver failure resulting in transplantation whites of your eyes turn yellow. These may be signs of serious or death. Most of these serious side effects occurred in patients with a liver problems. chronic liver disease such as hepatitis infection, but there have also • If you have HIV-1 and hepatitis B virus (HBV), your liver disease been a few reports in patients without any existing liver disease. may suddenly get worse if you stop taking ATRIPLA. •Bone changes. Lab tests show changes in the bones of patients treated Do not take ATRIPLA if you are taking the following medicines with tenofovir DF, a component of ATRIPLA. Some HIV patients treated because serious and life-threatening side effects may occur when with tenofovir DF developed thinning of the bones (osteopenia), which taken together: VascorŽ (bepridil), PropulsidŽ (cisapride), could lead to fractures. Also, bone pain and softening of the bone VersedŽ (midazolam), OrapŽ (pimozide), HalcionŽ (triazolam), (which may lead to fractures) may occur as a consequence of kidney Ž Ž or ergot medications (for example, Wigraine and Cafergot ). problems. If you have had bone problems in the past, your healthcare In addition, ATRIPLA should not be taken with: provider may want to check your bones. Ž Ž Ž Combivir (lamivudine/zidovudine), EMTRIVA (emtricitabine), Epivir Ž Ž Common side effects: or Epivir-HBV (lamivudine), Epzicom (abacavir sulfate/lamivudine), SUSTIVAŽ (efavirenz), TrizivirŽ (abacavir sulfate/lamivudine/zidovudine), •Dizziness, headache, trouble sleeping, drowsiness, trouble TRUVADAŽ (emtricitabine/tenofovir DF), or VIREADŽ (tenofovir DF), concentrating, and/or unusual dreams. These side effects tend to because they contain the same or similar active ingredients as ATRIPLA. go away after taking ATRIPLA for a few weeks. These symptoms may Ž ATRIPLA should not be used with HEPSERA (adefovir dipivoxil). be more severe with the use of alcohol and/or mood-altering (street) drugs. If you are dizzy, have trouble concentrating, and/or are drowsy, VfendŽ (voriconazole) or REYATAZŽ (atazanavir sulfate) with or without avoid activities that may be dangerous, such as driving or operating NorvirŽ (ritonavir) should not be taken with ATRIPLA since they may lose their effect and may also increase the chance of having side effects machinery. from ATRIPLA. FortovaseŽ or InviraseŽ (saquinavir) should not be used •Rash is a common side effect that usually goes away without any as the only protease inhibitor in combination with ATRIPLA. change in treatment, but may be serious in a small number of patients.

Taking ATRIPLA with St. John’s wort or products containing St. John’s wort •Other common side effects include: tiredness, upset stomach, vomiting, is not recommended as it may cause decreased levels of ATRIPLA, gas, and diarrhea. increased viral load, and possible resistance to ATRIPLA or Other possible side effects: cross-resistance to other anti-HIV drugs. •Changes in body fat have been seen in some people taking anti-HIV-1 This list of medicines is not complete. Discuss with your healthcare medicines. The cause and long-term health effects are not known. provider all prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, or herbal supplements you are taking or plan to take. •Skin discoloration (small spots or freckles) may also happen.

Tell your healthcare provider if you: •If you notice any symptoms of infection, contact your healthcare provider right away. •Are pregnant: Women should not become pregnant while taking ATRIPLA and for 12 weeks after stopping ATRIPLA. Serious birth defects •Additional side effects are inflammation of the pancreas, allergic have been seen in children of women treated during pregnancy with reaction (including swelling of the face, lips, tongue, or throat), one of the medicines in ATRIPLA. Women must use a reliable form of shortness of breath, pain, stomach pain, weakness, and indigestion. barrier contraception, such as a condom or diaphragm, even if they also You should take ATRIPLA once daily on an empty stomach. Taking use other methods of birth control, while on ATRIPLA and for 12 weeks ATRIPLA at bedtime may make some side effects less bothersome. after stopping ATRIPLA. •Are breastfeeding: Women with HIV should not breastfeed ATRIPLA is one of several treatment options your doctor may consider. because they can pass HIV through their milk to the baby. Also, You are encouraged to report negative side effects ATRIPLA may pass through breast milk and cause serious harm to the baby. of prescription drugs to the FDA. •Have liver problems, including hepatitis B or C virus infection.

Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Patient Information on the following pages. Š 2010 Bristol-Myers Squibb & Gilead Sciences, LLC. All rights reserved. ATRIPLA is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb & Gilead Sciences, LLC. EMTRIVA, VIREAD, and TRUVADA are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc. SUSTIVA and REYATAZ are registered trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb. All other trademarks are owned by third parties.

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“My entire HIV regimen in one pill daily.

For me, that’s great.”

Phil li p

on ATRIPLA for 2 years

ATRIPLA is the #1 prescribed HIV regimen.* About ATRIPLA: •Only ATRIPLA combines 3 HIV medications in 1 pill daily. †

• Proven to lower viral load to undetectable in approximately 7 out of 10 patients new to therapy, and also raise T-cell‡ (CD4+) count to help control HIV through 3 years of a clinical study.§ •ATRIPLA does not cure HIV-1 and has not been shown to prevent passing HIV-1 to others.

Selected Important Safety Information: Some people who have taken medicine like ATRIPLA have developed the following: a serious condition of acid buildup in the blood (lactic acidosis), and serious liver problems (hepatotoxicity). For patients with both HIV-1 and hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis may suddenly worsen if ATRIPLA is discontinued.

Please see detailed and additional Important Safety Information, including the bolded information to the left. †

Defined as a viral load of less than 400 copies/mL. Average increase of 312 cells/mm3. § In this study, 227 patients took the meds in ATRIPLA. ‡

Patient model. Individual results may vary.

Your doctor may prescribe ATRIPLA alone or with other HIV medications.

Talk to your doctor to see if ATRIPLA is right for you. * Synovate Healthcare Data; US HIV Monitor, Q1 2010.

To learn more, visit www.ATRIPLA.com

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FDA-Approved Patient Labeling Patient Information ATRIPLAŽ (uh TRIP luh) Tablets ALERT: Find out about medicines that should NOT be taken with ATRIPLA. Please also read the section “MEDICINES YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE WITH ATRIPLA.�

Generic name: efavirenz, emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (eh FAH vih renz, em tri SIT uh bean and te NOE’ fo veer dye soe PROX il FYOU mar ate) Read the Patient Information that comes with ATRIPLAÂŽ (efavirenz/emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) before you start taking it and each time you get a refill since there may be new information. This information does not take the place of talking to your healthcare provider about your medical condition or treatment. You should stay under a healthcare provider’s care when taking ATRIPLA. Do not change or stop your medicine without first talking with your healthcare provider. Talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist if you have any questions about ATRIPLA. What is the most important information I should know about ATRIPLA? • Some people who have taken medicine like ATRIPLA (which contains nucleoside analogs) have developed a serious condition called lactic acidosis (buildup of an acid in the blood). Lactic acidosis can be a medical emergency and may need to be treated in the hospital. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get the following signs or symptoms of lactic acidosis: • You feel very weak or tired. • You have unusual (not normal) muscle pain. • You have trouble breathing. • You have stomach pain with nausea and vomiting. • You feel cold, especially in your arms and legs. • You feel dizzy or lightheaded. • You have a fast or irregular heartbeat. • Some people who have taken medicines like ATRIPLA have developed serious liver problems called hepatotoxicity, with liver enlargement (hepatomegaly) and fat in the liver (steatosis). Call your healthcare provider right away if you get the following signs or symptoms of liver problems: • Your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice). • Your urine turns dark. • Your bowel movements (stools) turn light in color. • You don’t feel like eating food for several days or longer. • You feel sick to your stomach (nausea). • You have lower stomach area (abdominal) pain. • You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking nucleoside analog-containing medicines, like ATRIPLA, for a long time. • If you also have hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and you stop taking ATRIPLA, you may get a “flare-upâ€? of your hepatitis. A “flare-upâ€? is when the disease suddenly returns in a worse way than before. Patients with HBV who stop taking ATRIPLA need close medical follow-up for several months, including medical exams and blood tests to check for hepatitis that could be getting worse. ATRIPLA is not approved for the treatment of HBV, so you must discuss your HBV therapy with your healthcare provider.

What is ATRIPLA? ATRIPLA contains 3 medicines, SUSTIVAÂŽ (efavirenz), EMTRIVAÂŽ (emtricitabine) and VIREADÂŽ (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate also called tenofovir DF) combined in one pill. EMTRIVA and VIREAD are HIV-1 (human immunodeficiency virus) nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) and SUSTIVA is an HIV-1 non-nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NNRTI).

VIREAD and EMTRIVA are the components of TRUVADAÂŽ. ATRIPLA can be used alone as a complete regimen, or in combination with other anti-HIV-1 medicines to treat people with HIV-1 infection.

ATRIPLA is for adults age 18 and over. ATRIPLA has not been studied in children under age 18 or adults over age 65.

HIV infection destroys CD4+ T cells, which are important to the immune system. The immune system helps fight infection. After a large number of T cells are destroyed, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) develops.

ATRIPLA helps block HIV-1 reverse transcriptase, a viral chemical in your body (enzyme) that is needed for HIV-1 to multiply. ATRIPLA lowers the amount of HIV-1 in the blood (viral load). ATRIPLA may also help to increase the number of T cells (CD4+ cells), allowing your immune system to improve. Lowering the amount of HIV-1 in the blood lowers the chance of death or infections that happen when your immune system is weak (opportunistic infections).

Does ATRIPLA cure HIV-1 or AIDS? ATRIPLA does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. The long-term effects of ATRIPLA are not known at this time. People taking ATRIPLA may still get opportunistic infections or other conditions that happen with HIV-1 infection. Opportunistic infections are infections that develop because the immune system is weak. Some of these conditions are pneumonia, herpes virus infections, and Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) infection. It is very important that you see your healthcare provider regularly while taking ATRIPLA. Does ATRIPLA reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others?

ATRIPLA has not been shown to lower your chance of passing HIV-1 to other people through sexual contact, sharing needles, or being exposed to your blood. • Do not share needles or other injection equipment. • Do not share personal items that can have blood or body fluids on them, like toothbrushes or razor blades.

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ATRIPLAŽ (efavirenz/emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) •

Do not have any kind of sex without protection. Always practice safer sex by using a latex or polyurethane condom or other barrier to reduce the chance of sexual contact with semen, vaginal secretions, or blood.

Who should not take ATRIPLA? Together with your healthcare provider, you need to decide whether ATRIPLA is right for you.

Do not take ATRIPLA if you are allergic to ATRIPLA or any of its ingredients. The active ingredients of ATRIPLA are efavirenz, emtricitabine, and tenofovir DF. See the end of this leaflet for a complete list of ingredients.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking ATRIPLA? Tell your healthcare provider if you: • Are pregnant or planning to become pregnant (see “What should I avoid while taking ATRIPLA?â€?). • Are breast-feeding (see “What should I avoid while taking ATRIPLA?â€?). • Have kidney problems or are undergoing kidney dialysis treatment. • Have bone problems. • Have liver problems, including hepatitis B virus infection. Your healthcare provider may want to do tests to check your liver while you take ATRIPLA. • Have ever had mental illness or are using drugs or alcohol. • Have ever had seizures or are taking medicine for seizures.

What important information should I know about taking other medicines with ATRIPLA? ATRIPLA may change the effect of other medicines, including the ones for HIV-1, and may cause serious side effects. Your healthcare provider may change your other medicines or change their doses. Other medicines, including herbal products, may affect ATRIPLA. For this reason, it is very important to let all your healthcare providers and pharmacists know what medications, herbal supplements, or vitamins you are taking.

MEDICINES YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE WITH ATRIPLA • The following medicines may cause serious and life-threatening side effects when taken with ATRIPLA. You should not take any of these medicines while taking ATRIPLA: Vascor (bepridil), Propulsid (cisapride), Versed (midazolam), Orap (pimozide), Halcion (triazolam), ergot medications (for example, Wigraine and Cafergot). • ATRIPLA also should not be used with Combivir (lamivudine/zidovudine), EMTRIVA, Epivir, Epivir-HBV (lamivudine), Epzicom (abacavir sulfate/lamivudine), Trizivir (abacavir sulfate/lamivudine/zidovudine), SUSTIVA, TRUVADA, or VIREAD. • Vfend (voriconazole) should not be taken with ATRIPLA since it may lose its effect or may increase the chance of having side effects from ATRIPLA. • Do not take St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum), or products containing St. John’s wort with ATRIPLA. St. John’s wort is an herbal product sold as a dietary supplement. Talk with your healthcare provider if you are taking or are planning to take St. John’s wort. Taking St. John’s wort may decrease ATRIPLA levels and lead to increased viral load and possible resistance to ATRIPLA or cross-resistance to other anti-HIV-1 drugs. • ATRIPLA should not be used with HEPSERAŽ (adefovir dipivoxil).

It is also important to tell your healthcare provider if you are taking any of the following: • Fortovase, Invirase (saquinavir), Biaxin (clarithromycin), Noxafil (posaconazole), or Sporanox (itraconazole); these medicines may need to be replaced with another medicine when taken with ATRIPLA. • Calcium channel blockers such as Cardizem or Tiazac (diltiazem), Covera HS or Isoptin (verapamil) and others; Crixivan (indinavir), Selzentry (maraviroc); the immunosuppressant medicines cyclosporine (Gengraf, Neoral, Sandimmune, and others), Prograf (tacrolimus), or Rapamune (sirolimus); Methadone; Mycobutin (rifabutin); Rifampin; cholesterol-lowering medicines such as Lipitor (atorvastatin), Pravachol (pravastatin sodium), and Zocor (simvastatin); or Zoloft (sertraline); these medicines may need to have their dose changed when taken with ATRIPLA. • Videx, Videx EC (didanosine); tenofovir DF (a component of ATRIPLA) may increase the amount of didanosine in your blood, which could result in more side effects. You may need to be monitored more carefully if you are taking ATRIPLA and didanosine together. Also, the dose of didanosine may need to be changed. • Reyataz (atazanavir sulfate) or Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir); these medicines may increase the amount of tenofovir DF (a component of ATRIPLA) in your blood, which could result in more side effects. Reyataz is not recommended with ATRIPLA. You may need to be monitored more carefully if you are taking ATRIPLA and Kaletra together. Also, the dose of Kaletra may need to be changed. • Medicine for seizures [for example, Dilantin (phenytoin), Tegretol (carbamazepine), or phenobarbital]; your healthcare provider may want to switch you to another medicine or check drug levels in your blood from time to time.

These are not all the medicines that may cause problems if you take ATRIPLA. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider about all medicines that you take.

Keep a complete list of all the prescription and nonprescription medicines as well as any herbal remedies that you are taking, how much you take, and how often you take them. Make a new list when medicines or herbal remedies are added or stopped, or if the dose changes. Give copies of this list to all of your healthcare providers and pharmacists every time you visit your healthcare provider or fill a prescription. This will give your healthcare provider a complete picture of the medicines you use. Then he or she can decide the best approach for your situation.

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ATRIPLA® (efavirenz/emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) How should I take ATRIPLA? • Take the exact amount of ATRIPLA your healthcare provider prescribes. Never change the dose on your own. Do not stop this medicine unless your healthcare provider tells you to stop.

• You should take ATRIPLA on an empty stomach.

• Swallow ATRIPLA with water.

• Taking ATRIPLA at bedtime may make some side effects less bothersome.

• Do not miss a dose of ATRIPLA. If you forget to take ATRIPLA, take the missed dose right away, unless it is almost time for your next dose. Do not double the next dose. Carry on with your regular dosing schedule. If you need help in planning the best times to take your medicine, ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist.

• If you believe you took more than the prescribed amount of ATRIPLA, contact your local poison control center or emergency room right away.

• Tell your healthcare provider if you start any new medicine or change how you take old ones.

Your doses may need adjustment.

• When your ATRIPLA supply starts to run low, get more from your healthcare provider or pharmacy. This is very important because the amount of virus in your blood may increase if the medicine is stopped for even a short time. The virus may develop resistance to ATRIPLA and become harder to treat.

• Your healthcare provider may want to do blood tests to check for certain side effects while you take ATRIPLA. What should I avoid while taking ATRIPLA? • Women should not become pregnant while taking ATRIPLA and for 12 weeks after stopping it. Serious birth defects have been seen in the babies of animals and women treated with efavirenz (a component of ATRIPLA) during pregnancy. It is not known whether efavirenz caused these defects. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you are pregnant. Also talk with your healthcare provider if you want to become pregnant.

• Women should not rely only on hormone-based birth control, such as pills, injections, or implants, because ATRIPLA may make these contraceptives ineffective. Women must use a reliable form of barrier contraception, such as a condom or diaphragm, even if they also use other methods of birth control. Efavirenz, a component of ATRIPLA, may remain in your blood for a time after therapy is stopped. Therefore, you should continue to use contraceptive measures for 12 weeks after you stop taking ATRIPLA. • Do not breast-feed if you are taking ATRIPLA. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that mothers with HIV not breast-feed because they can pass the HIV through their milk to the baby. Also, ATRIPLA may pass through breast milk and cause serious harm to the baby. Talk with your healthcare provider if you are breast-feeding. You should stop breast-feeding or may need to use a different medicine.

• Taking ATRIPLA with alcohol or other medicines causing similar side effects as ATRIPLA, such as drowsiness, may increase those side effects.

• Do not take any other medicines, including prescription and nonprescription medicines and herbal products, without checking with your healthcare provider.

• Avoid doing things that can spread HIV-1 infection since ATRIPLA does not stop you from passing the HIV-1 infection to others.

What are the possible side effects of ATRIPLA? ATRIPLA may cause the following serious side effects: • Lactic acidosis (buildup of an acid in the blood). Lactic acidosis can be a medical emergency and may need to be treated in the hospital. Call your healthcare provider right away if you get signs of lactic acidosis. (See “What is the most important information I should know about ATRIPLA?”) • Serious liver problems (hepatotoxicity), with liver enlargement (hepatomegaly) and fat in the liver (steatosis). Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any signs of liver problems. (See “What is the most important information I should know about ATRIPLA?”) • “Flare-ups” of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, in which the disease suddenly returns in a worse way than before, can occur if you have HBV and you stop taking ATRIPLA. Your healthcare provider will monitor your condition for several months after stopping ATRIPLA if you have both HIV-1 and HBV infection and may recommend treatment for your HBV. ATRIPLA is not approved for the treatment of hepatitis B virus infection. If you have advanced liver disease and stop treatment with ATRIPLA, the “flare-up” of hepatitis B may cause your liver function to decline.

• Serious psychiatric problems. A small number of patients may experience severe depression, strange thoughts, or angry behavior while taking ATRIPLA. Some patients have thoughts of suicide and a few have actually committed suicide. These problems may occur more often in patients who have had mental illness. Contact your healthcare provider right away if you think you are having these psychiatric symptoms, so your healthcare provider can decide if you should continue to take ATRIPLA. • Kidney problems (including decline or failure of kidney function). If you have had kidney problems in the past or take other medicines that can cause kidney problems, your healthcare provider should do regular blood tests to check your kidneys. Symptoms that may be related to kidney problems include a high volume of urine, thirst, muscle pain, and muscle weakness.

• Other serious liver problems. Some patients have experienced serious liver problems including liver failure resulting in transplantation or death. Most of these serious side effects occurred in patients with a chronic liver disease such as hepatitis infection, but there have also been a few reports in patients without any existing liver disease.

ATRIPLA® (efavirenz/emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) Changes in bone mineral density (thinning bones). Laboratory tests show changes in the bones of patients treated with tenofovir DF, a component of ATRIPLA. Some HIV patients treated with tenofovir DF developed thinning of the bones (osteopenia) which could lead to fractures. If you have had bone problems in the past, your healthcare provider may need to do tests to check your bone mineral density or may prescribe medicines to help your bone mineral density. Additionally, bone pain and softening of the bone (which may contribute to fractures) may occur as a consequence of kidney problems.

Common side effects: Patients may have dizziness, headache, trouble sleeping, drowsiness, trouble concentrating, and/or unusual dreams during treatment with ATRIPLA. These side effects may be reduced if you take ATRIPLA at bedtime on an empty stomach. They also tend to go away after you have taken the medicine for a few weeks. If you have these common side effects, such as dizziness, it does not mean that you will also have serious psychiatric problems, such as severe depression, strange thoughts, or angry behavior. Tell your healthcare provider right away if any of these side effects continue or if they bother you. It is possible that these symptoms may be more severe if ATRIPLA is used with alcohol or mood altering (street) drugs.

If you are dizzy, have trouble concentrating, or are drowsy, avoid activities that may be dangerous, such as driving or operating machinery.

Rash may be common. Rashes usually go away without any change in treatment. In a small number of patients, rash may be serious. If you develop a rash, call your healthcare provider right away.

Other common side effects include tiredness, upset stomach, vomiting, gas, and diarrhea.

Other possible side effects with ATRIPLA: • Changes in body fat. Changes in body fat develop in some patients taking anti-HIV-1 medicine. These changes may include an increased amount of fat in the upper back and neck (“buffalo hump”), in the breasts, and around the trunk. Loss of fat from the legs, arms, and face may also happen. The cause and long-term health effects of these fat changes are not known.

• Skin discoloration (small spots or freckles) may also happen with ATRIPLA. • In some patients with advanced HIV infection (AIDS), signs and symptoms of inflammation from previous infections may occur soon after anti-HIV treatment is started. It is believed that these symptoms are due to an improvement in the body’s immune response, enabling the body to fight infections that may have been present with no obvious symptoms. If you notice any symptoms of infection, please inform your doctor immediately.

• Additional side effects are inflammation of the pancreas, allergic reaction (including swelling of the face, lips, tongue, or throat), shortness of breath, pain, stomach pain, weakness and indigestion.

Tell your healthcare provider or pharmacist if you notice any side effects while taking ATRIPLA. Contact your healthcare provider before stopping ATRIPLA because of side effects or for any other reason.

This is not a complete list of side effects possible with ATRIPLA. Ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for a more complete list of side effects of ATRIPLA and all the medicines you will take.

How do I store ATRIPLA? • Keep ATRIPLA and all other medicines out of reach of children.

• Store ATRIPLA at room temperature 77 °F (25 °C).

• Keep ATRIPLA in its original container and keep the container tightly closed.

• Do not keep medicine that is out of date or that you no longer need. If you throw any medicines away make sure that children will not find them.

General information about ATRIPLA: Medicines are sometimes prescribed for conditions that are not mentioned in patient information leaflets. Do not use ATRIPLA for a condition for which it was not prescribed. Do not give ATRIPLA to other people, even if they have the same symptoms you have. It may harm them.

This leaflet summarizes the most important information about ATRIPLA. If you would like more information, talk with your healthcare provider. You can ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist for information about ATRIPLA that is written for health professionals.

Do not use ATRIPLA if the seal over bottle opening is broken or missing.

What are the ingredients of ATRIPLA? Active Ingredients: efavirenz, emtricitabine, and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate Inactive Ingredients: croscarmellose sodium, hydroxypropyl cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, magnesium stearate, sodium lauryl sulfate. The film coating contains black iron oxide, polyethylene glycol, polyvinyl alcohol, red iron oxide, talc, and titanium dioxide.

•

May 2010 ATRIPLA is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb & Gilead Sciences, LLC. EMTRIVA, TRUVADA, HEPSERA and VIREAD are trademarks of Gilead Sciences, Inc. SUSTIVA is a trademark of Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company. Reyataz and Videx are trademarks of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company. Pravachol is a trademark of ER Squibb & Sons, LLC. Other brands listed are the trademarks of their respective owners.

SF-B0001B1-05-10

21-937-GS-007

TR5827

May 2010

22 jun - 5 jul 2011

8/ Politics

Marriage Equality Remains on the Cusp GOP Senate majority holds back Cuomo bill as session goes into overtime

by Paul Schindler

J.B. NICHOLAS

T

he momentum for moving marriage equality through the New York State Senate — which amped up dramatically on June 13 and 14, when five new supporters were announced — remained short of its goal as Gay City News went to print on the evening of June 22.

Since June 13, advocates led

by Governor Andrew Cuomo have pressed not only for the one additional supporter needed to reach the 32 votes ensuring passage, but also for the Senate Republican majority to move the bill from their conference onto the floor.

Several factors forced that effort into a holding pattern as the Legislature stayed in Albany past its scheduled June 20 adjournment.

First, undecided Republicans, numbering as many as six, said they needed to see greater protections for institutions and individuals with religious objections to marriage by same-sex couples.

As Cuomo engaged in negotiations with three of those GOP senators — Stephen Saland of Poughkeepsie, Andrew Lanza of Staten Island, and Long Island’s Kemp Hannon — it became clear they had been deputized by the Republican conference to force concessions.

In other words, no decision from the conference would come until the trio of negotiators had completed their efforts.

And no additional Republicans — beyond Rochester’s James Alesi and Troy’s Roy McDonald — would step up publicly to support the legislation.

The tasks of winning new votes and of getting an agreement from the GOP to allow the bill to go to the Senate floor, then, represented one and the same challenge.

Shrill statements from the religious right represented the “outsider” strategy complementing the efforts by Senate GOP insiders. Beyond the dire warnings about the destruction of personal morality, the family, and society itself came an extraordinary — and nearly

Governor Andrew Cuomo at last year’s Empire State Pride Agenda Fall Dinner in Manhattan.

unintelligible — statement from New York’s Catholic archbishop, Timothy Dolan, that compared the drive for marriage equality to actions by the regimes in China and North Korea that presume “daily to ‘redefine’ rights, relationships, values, and natural law.”

Achieving a marriage vote also had to await resolution of other critical issues — notably, a renewal of the state’s rent stabilization law governing hundreds of thousands of apartments in New York City and enactment of a property tax cap important in many upstate and Long Island Republican districts.

The GOP conference discussed the marriage equality bill — without coming to any agreement on a floor vote — on June 15, 16, and 17, but by Monday, June 20, the buzz in Albany was all about rent regulations.

Clearly, the Republicans, who control the flow of legislation onto the floor, decided it would only consider taking up marriage equality as the last piece of business prior to adjournment.

When news reports broke on June 21 that the gover -

nor, Republican Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos of Long Island, and Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver of the Lower East Side had reached a “framework” for resolving all major issues except for marriage equality, that did not spell doom for the gay advocates; instead, it showed that the GOP wanted to leverage the desire of the governor and the Democrats to get it done to their advantage on the other issues.

At the same time, they were careful not to reveal their answer on allowing a marriage equality vote when resolution of the other issues was announced lest they be seen to have traded marriage equality — a moral evil to their most conservative supporters — for run-of-the-mill economic benefits like rent and tax relief.

Throughout the back and forth on marriage, the governor has been eager to convey both confidence and a commitment to keep plowing ahead.

“If we send up the bill, and if the Republican conference takes up the bill and actually votes on the bill, I believe the votes will

be there at the end of the day,” Cuomo said at a June 13 press conference announcing vote switches from no to yes by three of the four hold-out Democrats — Senators Joseph Addabbo and Shirley Huntley of Queens, and Carl Kruger of Brooklyn (the fourth being the implacably anti-gay Reverend Ruben Diaz, Sr., from the Bronx).

Eight days later, in a brief evening Q&A with reporters at the Capitol, the governor said he was “cautiously optimistic” that marriage equality would prevail if given a vote. The following morning, June 22, out gay Upper West Side Democrat Daniel O’Donnell, the lead Assembly sponsor of the marriage measure, who for the fourth time steered the issue to victory there on June 15, told Gay City News he expected the Senate to follow suit once the Republicans allow a vote. Leading LGBT advocates working on the issue in Albany also retained an upbeat tone on June 22.

Through the afternoon of June 22, the Legislature tackled a wide array of measures, most importantly an omnibus bill addressing the rent and property tax issues. Shortly before the two houses went into session, Cuomo had his first meeting with Skelos and Silver about the language the governor’s office developed in response to the religious protection concerns raised by Saland, Lanza, and Hannon.

According to capitaltonight. com, Silver, on leaving that meeting, told reporters the language, which he said he had not seen before, was “acceptable.”

Scott Rief, Skelos’ spokesman, told Gay City News that the Republicans would review the proposed wording as a group once the omnibus bill was voted on. That meeting, he predicted, would take place either in the evening on June 22 or the following day.

The Albany Times-Union, however, quoted Skelos saying, “My colleagues and [the governor’s] counsel’s office are looking very closely at religious protections and I think they will conclude that. Once we have final legislation, we’ll discuss it

in conference.”

That suggested that Skelos and the Republicans might be further along in embracing Cuomo’s compromise on religious protections than spokesman Rief had let on. Still, Rief made clear that marriage would not be conferenced by the GOP until after a vote on the rent-property tax bill.

At 8 p.m. that evening, however, the deal reached on rent regulation was struggling to win sufficient support, and it was unclear if even the omnibus measure would be finished up, much less the marriage question.

The religious protection issue had brewed for several weeks before the governor became personally involved in the discussions.

Greg Ball, a Putnam County Republican who largely initiated it, at times suggested that even private individuals and businesses with objections to samesex marriage could discriminate in the provision of services — essentially a wholesale rewrite of state human rights law. By June 15, the governor’s office began responding to Ball in a dismissive tone, presumably aimed at separating him from other Republicans whose concerns did not go as far — at least in public.

Then, in comments to reporters in the Capitol the evening of June 17, Cuomo said of the religious reservations he had heard, “I believe that is a legitimate set of questions. I believe we can address their concerns without going over the line.”

Lanza’s office, asked the same day to specify what protections he thinks were missing from the bill, responded with an email saying only, “The religious carve outs in the Gov’s bill are not satisfactory to him as a lawyer. He feels that protecting religious freedom, one of the greatest American liberties, trumps all legislation.”

The New York Times, also on June 17, reported that Saland, Lanza, and Hannon had been examining religious carve-outs incorporated into New Hamp-

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The crowd leaving Union Square after the Queer Rising rally on June 19.

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marriage, from p.8

shire’s 2009 marriage equality law at the insistence of Governor John Lynch, a Democrat who signed that measure after the Legislature yielded to his requirements.

In a 2009 blog post analyzing the New Hampshire law, Nan Hunter, an out lesbian law professor at Georgetown, said it offered “the fullest scope for a religious exemption yet enacted in a marriage equality� law. News that the GOP was focused on the New Hampshire law coupled with the governor’s comments that he felt the undecided group had raised “legitimate� questions that “we can address,� not surprisingly led to some concern within the LGBT community — expressed, among other places, online in the following 24 hours — that the negotiation process could compromise existing civil rights protections for LGBT New Yorkers and same-sex couples.

Two leaders in the drive to pass the marriage bill in Albany — Assemblyman O’Donnell and Ross Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA) — insisted that any solution crafted would do no harm to existing civil rights protections. “We have assurances from Governor Cuomo that he will be carefully balancing religious liberties without compromising the civil rights of LGBT people,� Levi told Gay City News. “We all know there are states with extreme and arguably unconstitutional religious carve-outs, and no one has any interest in making New York one of those states.�

Levi emphasized he was not speaking specifically about New Hampshire or any other state, but rather reflecting on language either enacted or proposed among all the states that have taken up marriage equality and civil unions, whether

their efforts were successful or not.

The bill that the governor introduced on June 14 went beyond the language in earlier measures approved in the Assembly, by not only making clear that clergy have no obligation to officiate at any marriage to which they object, but also spelling out that religious bodies and benevolent associations can deny samesex wedding celebrations access to facilities they operate without running afoul of the public accommodations provisions in state human rights law. All of that language tracked existing provisions of New York law.

According to Hunter’s analysis, the New Hampshire law went further than that in a number of respects. One red flag she raised was the danger that a hospital could potentially deny somebody the right to visit their same-sex spouse or partner being treated there.

O’Donnell said that sort of threat will not be part of any language adopted in New York State law. “Just because we are looking at other states doesn’t mean we will use that language,� O’Donnell told Gay City News. “I can assure you that my speaker [Silver], this governor, this governor’s secretary, this governor’s counsel, and I would never, ever agree to write discrimination into this bill.�

Like the language that the governor incorporated into his program bill earlier this week, any new “verbiage,� he said, would reflect either existing statutory language or “the state of current law� as reflected by court decisions impacting those laws on the books.

O’Donnell has clearly concluded that at the heart of the Republicans’ concern is the need to reaffirm all religious protections in state law explicitly in the context of marriage equality — not, instead,

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Marriage Equality’s Cathy Marino-Thomas and Reverend Pat Bumgardner of the Metropolitan Community Church address the crowd at the Queer Rising rally in Union Square on June 19.

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marriage, from p.9

to make any special exceptions penalizing gay and lesbian couples.

“I can assure you that there are many, many provisions of the human rights law that exempt many people from many things,” he said, later adding of any changes put forward by the governor, “There will not be in there any language that reflects a reduction in the rights of gay people.”

O’Donnell dismissed out of hand concerns, for example, that a hospital would be given any rights to treat a same-sex spouse or partner in any way different than existing New York laws on visitation and medical decision-making already provide. Hospitals operating under religious control currently have no exemption under those statutes.

The protections under New York law were recently bootstrapped by the Obama administration’s rulemaking that any hospital receiving Medicaid or Medicare funding — virtually every one in the nation — must allow visitation by samesex partners and spouses.

O’Donnell explained that any new language would not create a new bill, but rather be a “chapter amendment” to what the Assembly has already passed.

He expects the Senate to approve both the original bill and the chapter amendment as separate measures. Even if the Assembly is unable to take up the amendment before adjournment, but needs to wait for a later convening, the original bill, O’Donnell said, would get the governor’s signature within a few days of passage, allowing marriage equality to become a reality in New York 30 days later.

The fact that the governor has been working so publicly in the past two weeks to move the marriage bill through the Senate has cheered activists.

One month before, Cuomo, responding to a question about why no Senate bill had yet been introduced as a companion to the one O’Donnell filed in the Assembly, said, “The discussions that

I’ve had with the collective group that is working on this in a unified way is we want to pass a bill. We don’t want to bring a bill up in the Senate that would fail. Nobody wants to have an instant replay of” December 2009, when the Senate rejected marriage equality by a 38-24 vote.

“We’re not having a vote for the sake of a vote,” he added.

Several activists criticized the governor for that statement, charging that he was “paying nothing but lip service” to the community and was “backtracking” on his promise to get marriage equality enacted.

York — pushed on a wide array of fronts.

Working with polling data from a variety of opinion research firms showing support for marriage equality at nearly 60 percent statewide — and less geographical disparities than one might expect — the groups ran phone-banking operations in a number of cities. In New York, HRC oversaw a daily effort that drew dozens to the Midtown offices of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Local 1190. Several television spots were created for markets around the state, and on June 3, 25,000 postcards supporting gay marriage were delivered to Senate offices in Albany.

“I can assure you that my speaker [Silver], this governor, this governor’s secretary, this governor’s counsel, and I would never, ever agree to write discrimination into this bill.”

Top officials in the Cuomo administration felt the governor’s statement was misconstrued, a source with direct knowledge of the effort being waged from his office told Gay City News. The governor’s team argues his remarks reflected “a strategy not of caution but one of precision,” based on a “very careful, very strategic” approach to identifying and winning a sufficient number of votes.

Others involved in discussions with the governor’s office have stated that more bluntly — this is a battle Cuomo doesn’t want to lose.

The LGBT advocacy groups, both professional and grassroots, working with the governor’s office on the strategy for enacting the legislation remained remarkably disciplined, cohesive, and tight-lipped in their loyalty to his leadership on the issue.

New Yorkers United for Marriage — a coalition that includes ESPA, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), Freedom to Marry, the Log Cabin Republicans, and the grassroots Marriage Equality New

Union leaders staged press conferences in Albany and New York the first week of June, events that included Denis Hughes, president of the state AFL-CIO; Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union; and representatives from the city’s Central Labor Council, the United Federation of Teachers, the Teamsters, the Civil Service Employees Association, the Public Employees Federation, and the New York State United Teachers.

That same week, a list of leading business leaders supporting marriage equality was released, and included names such as Citicorp chairman Dick Parsons, Loews Corporation co-chairman Jonathan Tisch, and real estate developer Bruce Ratner.

Grassroots rallies were held in the Bronx on June 3 and in Brooklyn on June 6, that second event in Bay Ridge protesting Republican Senator Martin Golden, who, just one day after Mayor Michael Bloomberg, his chief political

patron, was in Albany lobbying for the marriage bill, introduced legislation to strip same-sex couples married outside the state of the legal recognition they currently enjoy here.

Bloomberg followed up on his May lobbying visit to Albany with a June 16 appearance before the Republican conference urging its members, to whom he has in recent years been the single largest campaign contributor, to allow a Senate vote.

Latino elected officials, including Upper Manhattan State Senator Adriano Espaillat and Councilwomen Rosie Mendez of the Lower East Side and Melissa Mark-Viverito of East Harlem, appeared with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at Manhattan’s LGBT Community Center on June 19, the same day that clergy supporters of marriage equality from around the state spoke out publicly.

Queer Rising, a grassroots direct action group that earlier in the year held civil disobedience actions demanding that Cuomo move more aggressively on marriage, held rallies on June 17 at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street and on June 19 in Union Square urging LGBT New Yorkers to bombard the offices of Skelos and undecided Republicans with calls insisting that a floor vote be held.

To be sure, the other side has been out in force as well.

On June 14, the City Action Coalition International, a group of religious organizations, held a press conference on the steps of City Hall in New York. And in the last two weeks, as gay rights advocates lined the Capitol’s corridors in Albany to press for action, they have faced off against anti-equality demonstrators, many of them religious and often in considerably larger numbers.

O’Donnell said legislators at times feel they are running the gauntlet as they move around the building. The dueling demonstrations have, however, created images that television stations and anyone with a video-capable smart phone have found irresistible.

22 jun - 5 jul 2011

Politics /11

11th Hour Rally Against Marriage Equality At New York’s City Hall, leading opponents offer questionable vote count

by DUNCAN OSBORNE

GAY CITY NEWS

A

lobbyist for New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, the group leading the opposition to same-sex marriage in New York, said 30 state senators have promised to vote no on that legislation and another two are strongly leaning toward a no vote.

“Thirty are positive and we have two that are 95 percent with us,” said Reverend Duane R. Motley, a senior lobbyist at the conservative group.

Motley commented following a June 14 press conference on the steps of New York’s City Hall that was organized by the City Action Coalition International, a group of religious organizations.

By the time of the press conference, 29 Democrats and one Republican had already committed to supporting legislation enacting gay marriage in New York. Republicans control the

Brian Raum, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, speaks as (far r.) City Councilman Fernando Cabrera and Reverend Joseph Mattera look on.

62-member State Senate with a slim 32 to 30 majority.

In putting forward his count, Motley said he had 30 sure Republican no votes, though it is likely that he mistakenly counted Ruben Diaz, a Bronx Democrat and ardent gay marriage opponent, as one of those

30. He did not respond to an email seeking clarification.

Motley said that Roy J. McDonald, who represents Troy, and Greg Ball, who represents Brewster, were the two Republicans who were likely no votes. “I pretty much feel they are going to come our way,” he

said.

In fact, just hours later, McDonald announced to reporters in Albany that he planned to vote yes.

Gay marriage legislation has passed the Democrat-dominated State Assembly by wide margins three times since 2007.

It had a single floor debate and vote in the State Senate, in 2009, when it lost in a 38 to 24 vote. Eight Democrats joined 30 Republicans in that 2009 vote.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has made passing the legislation a priority and has been pressing state senators for their support.

A coalition of gay groups, New Yorkers United for Marriage, has been aggressively lobbying state senators to the point that two Democrats who voted no in 2009, Joseph P. Addabbo Jr. and Shirley Huntley, both of Queens, said on June 13 that opinions in their districts have shifted from heavily opposed in 2009 to largely in support now.

Another three for mer no votes –– Democrat Carl Kruger of Brooklyn and Republicans James Alesi of Rochester and McDonald –– have also flipped so far.

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Rabbi Yehuda Levin (center), who leads Congregation Mevakshei Hashem in Flatbush and is known for his opposition to gay rights and a woman’s right to choose.

Assembly Member Dick Gottfried wishes you a

Happy Pride!

• Representing Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, Murray Hill, and part of the Lincoln Center area • Chair, NYS Assembly Health Committee • Same Sex Marriage bill, co-sponsor • GENDA (Transgender rights), sponsor • Leads the Fight for Funding for HIV and other services for the LGBT community Dick Gottfried’s Community Office: 242 West 27th St., ground floor Ph: 212-807-7900 E-mail: gottfrr@assembly.state.ny.us

11th hour, from p.11

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has lobbied state senators to win votes for gay marriage and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the marriage coalition.

The City Hall press conference brought together religious and civic leaders from across the city who wanted to counter the pro-gay marriage messages from Bloomberg and Cuomo.

“We’re just trying to protect what has been normal for thousands of years,” said Reverend Joseph Mattera, the senior pastor at Brooklyn’s Resurrection Church and the leader of a coalition of evangelical churches in the New York City area. “We are doing this for the sake of our children... We believe that the mayor and the governor are making a huge mistake.”

Also speaking were Chuck Stetson, a founder and managing director at PEI Funds, an investment firm, and a longtime opponent of gay marriage, and Brian Raum, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative law firm. City Councilman Fernando Cabrera, a Democrat who represents part of the Bronx, attended part of the press conference but did not speak.

The event also drew support from Bishop Harry Jackson, the senior pastor at Hope Christian Church in Maryland. Jackson has emerged as the leading African-American voice opposing gay marriage.

“What we have today is a group of people trying to hitchhike on or highjack or take the legacy of the real civil rights movement and make it their own,” Jackson said. “Most African Americans are incensed by this; thus we find in every state a huge majority of African-American voters have voted against same-sex marriage.”

Motley told the assembled crowd –– who Mattera said represented thousands of churches –– that they must quickly contact their state senators and assemblymembers to urge them to oppose gay marriage. The Legislature is scheduled to adjourn on June 20, but could leave Albany as early as June 17.

GAY CITY NEWS

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Chuck Stetson, a founder and managing director at PEI Funds, an investment firm, and a longtime opponent of gay marriage.

“All we have to do is hold off the governor and his forces through Friday,” Motley told the crowd. “Keep burning up those phone lines.”

Responding to reporters, Motley conceded that the conservative opposition to same-sex marriage in New York was not as pronounced as that in other states.

“I would like to have seen a stronger full-court press,” he said. “I think they’re complacent.”

While the religious conservatives held their event on the City Hall steps, a group of counter-protesters assembled within sight and earshot in City Hall Park. They sang and chanted throughout the press conference.

“We organized today’s protest so we could get the message out that there are religious leaders who support marriage equality,” said Louis Flores, a member of Connecting Rainbows, the group that organized the event.

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Assemblymembers Dick Gottfried, Micah Kellner, Matt Titone, Deborah Glick, Linda Rosenthal, and Daniel O’Donnell marching in the 2007 New York City LGBT Pride Parade, shortly after the first successful marriage equality vote.

n politics

Assembly Answered Cuomo’s Call Quickly Heavily Democratic chamber re-upped on marriage equality a day after bill’s introduction

BY SIMON GARRON-CAINE

W

hile Senate Republicans dragged their feet for more than a week on the question of moving a marriage equality bill to the floor, the Assembly, in barely a day, rushed Governor Andrew Cuomo’s measure through committee and to a vote. It was approved 80-63 late in the evening on June 15.

The governor introduced the measure the previous afternoon, and with the dramatic news on June 13 and 14 that three Senate Democrats and two Republicans had changed their earlier positions and would now vote in favor of marriage equality, the drive for passage won a significant boost. The five new votes put the number of supporters at 31, just one shy of a majority.

The Senate Republican conference, however, met behind closed doors over each of the three days that followed the Assembly action, only to announce afterward they would revisit the issue in a later meeting, and no additional Republican stepped forward in support, though as many as half a dozen were thought to remain in play.

By June 20, the scheduled adjournment date, the Legislature and governor were focused on coming to agreement on New York City’s rent stabilization law, and it became clear that marriage equality would have to wait on resolution of that issue and also the property tax cap, on which a general outline had been signed

off on weeks before.

As the marriage stalemate played out, key Senate Republicans were engaged in ongoing negotiations with the governor over additional religious freedom protections they wanted to see prior to allowing a vote, language that would in turn need to go back to the Assembly.

The June 15 Assembly floor discussion reflected the tenor of the ongoing debate that had taken place over weeks among Albany legislators, with passionate statements supporting equality answered by mostly tepid opposition influenced by religious values and the notion of “redefining marriage.”

Assemblywoman Nancy Calhoun, an 11-term Orange County Republican incumbent, spoke of her support for civil unions for same-sex couples, maintaining that marriage “has to do with a man and a woman.”

“I really do have a problem with the concept of changing marriage,” she said.

“The very rights that you deserve and should have do not require the word marriage. They can be achieved through civil unions and be achieved through legislation we do here.”

Essex County Republican Janet Duprey voted against marriage equality in 2007, but has since changed sides. She credited pleas from the parents of gay and lesbian children, pleas she said she could not ignore.

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14 Days 14 Nights THEATER Hot Blood

THU.JUN.23

“Sex on the Beach” is Roy Arias’ new three-character play that explores the sex tourist industry in the Spanish Caribbean, following practitioners of the world’s oldest profession of different gender expressions and circumstances fighting their demons in dramatic but hilarious ways. La Caramelo is transsexual, Brazo E’ Niño is a hustler, and Esperanza is la jinetera, the Cuban escort. Alfred Preisser directs. Roy Arias’ Studios & Theatres, 300 W. 43rd St., fifth fl. Thu.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. through Jul. 30. Tickets are $25-47.50 at smarttix.com.

BOOKS Glitter and Be Gay

In a special Pride edition of “Drunken!

Careening! Writers!,” Kathleen Warnock hosts Bob Smith, Jenifer Levin, Isa Coffey, and Joel Derfner. Bob Smith began his writing career with the 1998 Lambda Literary Award-winning collection of essays “Openly Bob” and, now, his second novel, “Remembrance of Things I Forgot,” has debuted. Jenifer Levin is the author of the novels “Water Dancer,” “Snow,” “Shimoni’s Lover,” and “The Sea of Light,” and the short story collection “Love and Death, & Other Disasters.” Isa Coffey lost out last summer on a job teaching high school sexuality she was offered after the faculty scanned the web only to discover that she didn’t use a pseudonym for writing smut.

Her work has been seen in “Best Lesbian Erotica 2008” and this year’s Lammy award-winning “Sometimes She Lets Me.” Joel Derfner is the author of “Gay Haiku” and “Swish: My Quest to Become the Gayest Person Ever and What Happened Instead.” KGB Bar, 85 E. Fourth St., btwn. Bowery & Second Ave. Jun. 23, 7 p.m. Free.

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PERFORMANCE Pride in Da Bronx

BAAD, the Bronx Academy of Art & Dance, continues its 11th annual “The Out Like That! Festival” with Ashton Pina’s “WERQ! The Dragsical,” which tells the journey of self-discovery of a young drag queen named Kris. In a whirlwind of drag shows, gowns, and make-up –– and with the help of his fairy dragfamily –– he finds his inner and outer queen and learns in his heart the meaning of “Bitch, you betta WERQ!” Jun. 23, 8 p.m. Tickets ere $15.

The closing night performance, “Singin’ Out,” features M. Lamar, a black avantgarde, punk rock countertenor who both shimmers and thunders with his performances, and vocalist and composer Imani Uzuri, whom New York magazine termed “stunning” in her unique mix of sacred music, world culture, and experimentation.

Jun. 24, 8 p.m. Tickets are $20. BAAD, 841 Barretto St., btwn. Garrison & Lafayette Aves., Hunts Point (6 train to Hunts Point Ave.). More information and tickets at BronxAcademyofArtsandDance. org or 718-842-5223.

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Lesbian & Straight Education Network.

Comedian Alec Mapa (“Ugly Betty”) hosts with appearances by Mimi Imfurst and Frank DeCaro and remarks by sex advice columnist Dan Savage, the creator of the “It Gets Better” anti-bullying video campaign. Gramercy Theater, 127 E. 23rd St. Jun. 23, 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20-$40 at SpinCycleNYC.com or 212-352-3101.

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FRI.JUN.24

Bob Smith: Jun.23

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NIGHTLIFE Dance for a Purpose

Devotion’s “United We Dance” celebrates Gay Pride and ten years of a commitment to quality house music, the best underground parties, and celebrating diversity. The evening is a benefit for Lifebeat, the music industry group that educates youth about HIV prevention through music. The DJs include Ruben Mancias, David Harness, Jellybean Benitez, and Tedd Patterson, and Inaya Day makes a live appearance. Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette St., btwn. White & Walker Sts. Jun. 23, 10 p.m. Admission is $10 before midnight; $15 after that.

GALLERY Responding to AIDS

For the fourth consecutive year, Visual AIDS presents a group exhibition to coincide with the June LGBT Pride celebrations. “Mixed Messages: A(I)DS, Art + Words,” curated by John Chaich, which includes over 40 text-based works by visual artists and designers whose reactions and connections to HIV/AIDS reflect the contemporary moment’s tenor about the pandemic. From painting to print, sculpture and installation, the featured works juxtapose public messages with deeply personal revelations, which are at once polemic and poetic, positive and negative, both in tone and form. La MaMa La Galleria, 6 E. First St., btwn. Bowery & Second Ave. Gallery hours are Thu.-Sun. 1-6 p.m. Exhibition runs through Jul. 3. For information about special events during the exhibition’s run, call 212-505-2476 or visit lamama.org/category/lagalleria.

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PERFORMANCE Big & Bitter

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Drag Artist Jackie Beat offers her take

ners, drums, giant puppets, flags, hula hoops, or just be there! It’s the annual Dyke March –– a protest march, not a parade. Organizers don’t ask for a permit, asserting their right to protest for equal rights, safety, and visibility. Thousands of dykes take over the streets every year in celebration of LBTQ women and to protest against ongoing discrimination, harassment, and anti-LBTQ violence in schools, on the job, in our families, and on the streets. Gather at Bryant Park, one half block west of the stepping off point at 42nd St. and Fifth Ave. Jun. 25 p.m. The march proceeds down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square Pk.

on LGBT Pride with “Pray the Gay Away.”

This big, bawdy, bold, and ballsy funny “lady” brings what she calls her most controversial show to date to Gramercy Theater, 127 E. 23rd St. Jun. 24, 7:30 p.m.; Jun. 25, 10 p.m. Tickets are $20-$25 at SpinCycleNYC.com or 212-352-3101.

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NIGHTLIFE Desi + Queer + Fab

Now in its tenth year of providing a safe entertainment space for South Asian LGBT youth and adults, Sholay Productions’ Desilicious parties are a Gay Pride tradition. The slogan of this year’s “Hot Pink Pride Party” is “Desi + Queer + Fab.” DJ Geeta will be spinning in the Red Velvet Room, and special dance performance

by Hariqbal Basu will kick off at midnight.

Rebel Nightclub , 251 W. 30th St. Jun. 24, 10 p.m. Admission is $10 before 11 p.m.; $20 afer that. www.sholayevents. com/wordpress/?p=1668.

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SAT.JUN.25

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PRIDE Dykes Hit the Streets

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The Lavender Lens

The NYC Photo Club, an organization for LGBT photographers, holds its seventh annual exhibit, “As We See It –– 2011.” LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St. Exhibition runs through Aug. 15. Free admission. Sales benefit the Center.

It’s time for lesbians to make some noise. Be visible. Be heard. Demonstrate, agitate, liberate! Bring signs, ban-

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Art at Ligne Roset

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DONNA ACETO

It Keeps Getting Better

Andrea McArdle, Nellie McKay, the band BETTY, and Rachael Sage headline “Better & Better,” a benefit for the Gay,

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Anté art is a new movement encompassing visual art, music, and performance, rooted in the early Avant Garde, taking Dadaism as an example. The Leslie/ Lohman Gay Art Foundation and The Kymara Gallery unveil “Queer.Punk.,” a new exhibition by anté artist Fernando Carpaneda. His sculptures capture subjects that reflect the extraordinary side of the human element. Hustlers, rent boys, punk rockers, unknown artists, junkies, thieves, and outcasts are recreated to the minutest detail in clay. Parts of the artist’s own clothing are hand tailored into miniature wardrobes. Leslie/Lohman Basement Annex,127-B Prince St. at Wooster St. Opening reception is Jun. 25, 6-11 p.m. Exhibition runs through Jul 2, 1-6 p.m. For more information about Carpaneda, visit kymaraonline.com.

Daniel Nardicio presents a Gay Pride special Friday “Buck,” his underwear party, starring six all-jockstrap-or-less dancers.

This gathering is mandatory underwear.

Sveta from the Syndey Mardi Gras is the DJ. Rockbar, 185 Christopher St. at Weehawken St., near the West Side Hwy. Jun. 24, 10 p.m. Admission is $25, but $15 if you wear a jockstrap or can prove you’re 28 or younger.

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GALLERY A Latter-Day Dadaism

Bucks in Their Skivvies

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Dyke March: Jun.25

Ligne Roset, the French modern designer furniture maker, presents a group art show, Traces, featuring work by Tom Brazelton, Vincent Como, Donn Davis, Rory Donaldson, Holly Miller, Gregory Montreuil, and Kirsten Nash. 155 Wooster at Houston St. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sat. 11 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sun., noon-5 p.m., through Jun. O

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Jun 25, continued on p.96

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16/ Culture n culture

Tracy Morgan Apology Tour Begins in NY “Comic” meets with gay youth and parents of slain gay man

BY ANDY HUMM

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morgan, continued on p.78

NEILSON BARNARD/ WIREIMAGE 2011

racy Morgan, who went on a tirade against gays in a Nashville stand-up routine June 3 –– saying among other things that he would stab “that little nigger” son “to death” if he were gay and not masculine enough for his tastes –– began trying to make amends June 17 in New York by meeting with two homeless gay kids and the parents of a 20-year old who was gay-bashed to death in 2007 in South Carolina.

While Morgan did not “man up” –– as he said, in his routine, an overly gay-friendly President Barack Obama needed to — and face the press (he will not do so until June 21 back in Tennessee), he apparently left the meeting in tears. ReportJim Parker and his wife Elke Kennedy, Tracy Morgan with his fiancée, Jayden Love, Raciel Castillo, GLAAD’s Sharda Sekaran, and Ali Forney’s Carl Siciliano meet in New York on June 17.

GET YOUR HEART ON

NEW YORK Volunteer for an HIV vaccine study The Columbia University Medical Center and Project Achieve are looking for HIV-negative men who men, and M-to-F transwomen, 18-50 years old, for an HIV vaccine study.

Volunteers receive reimbursement for time and travel.

www.ihaveahearton.org 212.305.2201 | 212.388.0008 |

Columbia U Project Achieve

Scan it with your phone

NY_ChelseaNow _halfpg_9x5.indd 1

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gay city news

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Organizers of a June 17 vigil at the Stonewall Inn told the crowd that calls to Majority Leader Skelos and the Senate switchboard remained essential.

n politics

Pro-Equality Visibility Up to Finish Line In the final stretch, activists, advocacy groups, elected officials kept turning out

BY PAUL SCHINDLER

A

s the Legislature wrapped up its business for the week on June 17 –– with only one scheduled day remaining in the session (a deadline that proved flexible the following Monday) –– activists stepped up their visibility in the drive to make marriage equality a reality.

With some activists just making their way out of the capital along with the legislators Friday evening, a group of roughly 100 New Yorkers gathered at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in the West Village for a vigil to protest the lack of final action that week on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s gay marriage bill.

The demonstration, called by the direct action group Queer Rising –– which earlier this year twice blocked traffic to press the governor to follow through on his pledge to bring gay marriage up for a vote –– focused on the Senate Republican majority’s failure to allow Cuomo’s bill to go to the floor.

The GOP caucus had met for several hours on each of June 15, 16, and 17 to discuss the measure, each time concluding by telling reporters that no agreement had yet been reached, despite Majority Leader Dean Skelos’ repeated statements going back nine months that he expected his colleagues to permit a vote.

But on June 17, Skelos told reporters that his party was still not convinced that the bill would not have “unintended consequences” on religious bodies in the state.

The measure, which passed the Assembly, for the fourth time since 2007, on June 15, at that point remained one vote shy of the 32 needed for passage. The roster of supporters stood at 29 of the 30 Democrats and two of the 32 Republicans.

Queer Rising activists urged the crowd to take out their cell phones on the spot

to call both Skelos’ Albany office and the main Senate switchboard to reach Republicans who remained undecided. Holding the two phone numbers aloft on large posters, they also encouraged the crowd to take photos of the numbers and post them to their Facebook and Twitter pages.

The Reverend Pat Bumgardner, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church, an LGBTQ congregation in Midtown, said the claim that Cuomo’s bill does not sufficiently protect religious freedom “is an insult to the democratic process and to those of us who are people of faith and believe in the separation of church and state.”

Queer Rising was back at it two days later, holding a larger rally in Union Square Park. At that event, the roughly 250 demonstrators demanded that June 19 be “the last day of marriage inequality in New York State,” a goal that was not met when the Legislature, meeting on June 20, focused most of its attention on reaching an agreement on New York City’s rent stabilization guidelines.

Other activists also chose Father’s Day to press for full marriage equality for gay and lesbian families. New Yorkers United for Marriage, a coalition of the leading advocacy groups in the fight, held events led by supportive clergy statewide.

At the LGBT Community Center that day, out lesbian City Council Speaker Christine Quinn of Chelsea was joined by colleagues Rosie Mendez, an out lesbian Lower East Sider, and Melissa Mark-Viverito of East Harlem, and Upper Manhattan State Senator Adriano Espaillat in a show of Latino community support for the bill.

On June 21, as the governor and Assembly and Senate leaders continued to debate the rent stabilization issue, putting off for the time being any consideration of marriage, advocates rallied in Albany in the park immediately adjacent to the Capitol.

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22 jun – 5 jul 2011

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cuomo’s call, from p.14

Supporters lined up to dismiss the standard opposition claim that marriage is a timeless institution that would be irreparably harmed by the governor’s legislation.

“It’s actually not true,” said Manhattan Assemblyman Dick Gottfried, who was the originating sponsor of marriage equality legislation, handing off that role to O’Donnell in 2007. “If we were to look honestly at what the institution of marriage was as little as a hundred years ago, we would be looking at an institution we scarcely recognize.”

Like several of his colleagues, Gottfried pointed out that the history of marriage included treating women as property and not allowing mixed-race marriages.

“It was all about property, it was all about hierarchy,” he said. “It was not at all about love.”

Assemblyman Michael Fitzpatrick, a Suffolk County Republican who said his Catholic faith “warmed his values,” concluded, “I still believe gay marriage is wrong. Very wrong.”

But the loudest example of religious opposition came from Brooklyn’s Dov Hikind, an Orthodox Jewish assemblyman. Hikind lashed out at what he termed the “unfair” criticism that those opposed to marriage equality are lacking in compassion. Redefining marriage is “unbelievable,” he argued, and an affront to God.

22 jun – 5 jul 2011 But for all Hikind’s hysterics, which included holding aloft a picture of pop star Lady Gaga as an example of samesex marriage supporters, several other Jewish Assembly members countered his position.

Joel Miller, a Dutchess County Republican, called the religious case against marriage “the most ridiculous argument I have ever heard,” likening that line of thinking to the sort of divisiveness that can lead to bloodshed. David Weprin, a freshman Democrat from Queens, described himself as an “observant” Jew who was married by an Orthodox rabbi.

“The time has come, and I recommend everyone vote for this bill,” Weprin said.

“This is not a religious issue, it’s a civil issue,” argued Duprey, who called the legislation “the final step in eliminating civil rights inequalities.”

One Assembly member, Kingston Democrat Kevin Cahill, characterized the day’s discussion as more respectful of the question’s importance than had been the case two years ago, when, he recalled, members walked out of the chambers, worked on their computers, and had “cell phones going off.”

“Today we were reminded of the gravity of what we do in this chamber,” Cahill said.

While several members talked about gay family members — Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, a Tompkins County Democrat, and Assemblyman Charles Lavine,

www.gaycitynews.com

Out gay freshman Assemblyman Harry Bronson talked about the discrimination he faced at a law firm where he worked.

a Nassau County Democrat, spoke of brothers who died of AIDS — several gay lawmakers told personal stories.

Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, a Manhattan Democrat who was the first openly lesbian or gay member of the Legislature, spoke about her parents lifelong relationship and her sisters’ marriages, calling her upbringing more traditional than that of most of the marriage equality opponents.

“It just turns out, I am who I am,” she said.

Freshman Democratic Assemblyman Harry Bronson of Rochester told a story of coming out to a partner at a law firm where he worked as a young man.

“We talked about it a little bit, finished our sailing trip, and went our separate ways that afternoon,” said the assemblyman.

The next morning, the partner walked

into his office, closed the door behind him, and told Bronson, “There will be no place for you in this firm” if any other partners found out. Two weeks later, Bronson quit.

Bronx Democrat José Rivera, one of the more passionate speakers, took the opportunity to rail against fellow Bronx Democrat Ruben Diaz, Sr., an outspoken equality opponent on the Senate side.

“For those individuals who are using irresponsible rhetoric as I have seen in the borough of the Bronx for the last two years … that leads to hate crimes, [and] is not to be accepted by anyone,” said Rivera. “That goes for anyone preaching hate in the borough of the Bronx or anywhere in New York State.”

For his part, Diaz argued Rivera’s posture reflects politically motivated retaliation for a coup Diaz led to unseat him from the Bronx County Democratic chairmanship two years ago.

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22/ Religion

Hiding In Plain Sight A conservative pastor builds a mega-church in Manhattan

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

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n late 2009, Tim Keller, the senior pastor at New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church, was responding to questions at the Covenant Theological Seminary, a religious school run by his denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America. One student asked how the church should respond to homosexuality.

Keller, a noted author, a sought-after speaker, and a leading voice among evangelicals and in his denomination, stumbled through ums, uhs, and unfinished phrases. He then said that there are “lots and lots of folks who have samesex attraction” in his church, as well as people attending who are not gay, but have gay friends.

“So, the best thing has always been for me to not do the public teaching as much as segment my audience through books, through classes, through one on ones, and so on,” Keller said. “I think the time is probably coming in which we’re going to have to be more public in how we talk about homosexuality.”

Keller, 61, also ducked this past March when questioned

by Lauren Green, a Fox News reporter. Green had earlier noted that Chuck Stetson, a National Organization for Marriage board member, was sitting in the audience and, as the event ended, she asked Keller for his position on gay marriage.

“Well, you know, I would actually say and this is a, this is definitely the time to come to a conclusion,” Keller said, and the audience roared with laughter.

When Green said Keller could answer the question at the next forum, Keller said, “Maybe we should have a different interviewer and a different answerer for that one.”

On blogs, other Presbyterians and evangelicals have criticized him for not clearly stating the Bible’s position on homosexuality. Responding in writing to written questions from Gay City News, Keller wrote that “if I am given adequate time to do justice to the subject,” he was comfortable discussing homosexuality publicly.

“Homosexuality is not God’s original design for sexuality: sex is designed for marriage between a man and a woman,” he wrote. “Christians are called to love and serve the practical needs and interests of all their neighbors, including gay people, people of other faiths, and anyone who believes differently than they do... It is very hard to say both these things with equal weight and clarity. People on one side of the issue hate to hear the first part articulated, and others hate to hear the second.”

Keller has been less concerned with the complexity of this discourse in the past. In a 1990 sermon, Keller said, “Homosexuality, prostitution, sex outside of marriage, and adultery all fall outside of what God says he has designed sex for... [H]omosexuality, the Bible teaches us, is not a design for human relationships.”

K e l l e r a l so argued then that homosexuality was a learned behavior that could be unlearned.

“If we learned something, we can change it with great effort, with repentance, with the power of the spirit, with the help of the body of Christ,” he said in 1990.

“If you give yourself to him and you give the problem to him, there is no reason for you to believe that it won’t happen to you, too.”

Prior to coming to New York

Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s senior pastor, has softened his tone on homosexuality in recent years, sometimes sounding equivocal, but insists, “I haven’t changed them in any substantive way.

to act on that attraction in what they understand to be faithfulness to God,” Keller wrote. The passing of time may have mellowed his delivery, but the message is the same.

“Homosexuality is not God’s original design for sexuality: sex is designed for marriage between a man and a woman.”

City in 1989 to build his church, Keller lived in Philadelphia, and for four years there he was the board chair of Harvest USA, an ex-gay ministry that still operates in that city.

Redeemer does not have an ex-gay ministry, but “there have been many people in our church over the years who have been attracted to members of the same sex but have chosen not

“Over the years I hope I’ve learned to express my views more clearly, but I haven’t changed them in any substantive way,” he wrote to Gay City News. “The articulation may have changed as (I hope) I’ve become more thoughtful and more sensitive to the Biblical balances.”

Keller has also responded to living in a generally liberal and

very diverse city while building a mega-church. Redeemer has five services in three sites every Sunday that collectively draw thousands. In 2008, the church spent $21.5 million to buy a West 83rd Street building that will become its new home.

Keller has carefully guarded his and Redeemer’s reputation.

In 1998, a New York Times story on the church read, in part, “Several current and for mer members described Redeemer as being full of fundamentalists and zealous, newly converted Christians pushing hard-line views.”

In a letter to the paper, Keller wrote, “Fundamentalist churches by definition stress political issues, are culturally narrow and hostile to the surrounding culture. Redeemer is none of these things, but the selective use of material in the sidebar titled ‘The Pastor on the Issues’ gives this strong impression.

Other facts or quotes that could have challenged such a stereo-

type in readers’ minds were omitted.”

Keller wrote to Gay City News, “Life circumstances have influenced the way I have spoken on the subject.” He had a younger brother who was gay and died of AIDS 13 years ago.

“We had a close relationship and spoke freely and frankly about Christianity and homosexuality,” he wrote. “I came to understand his point of view and his struggle with Christian teaching, and that very intense experience helped me express the classic Christian view without compromise but with a new sympathy.”

That “new sympathy” notwithstanding, Keller remains conservative in his views and associations.

Redeemer is a member of the Gospel Coalition, a large group of evangelical churches that includes Mark Driscoll, an ardently anti-gay pastor at Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, and Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on its leadership council. Keller serves on that council.

Keller also serves on the advisory board of the New Canaan Society, an all-male Christian organization. Other advisory board members include Michael J. Timmis, a major funder of Roman Catholic charities and right-wing causes, and Steve Brown, who was on the Harvest USA board as recently as 2009.

Keller wrote that some of his peers “speak with a combination of sanctimony and spite” when discussing homosexuality. He continues to carefully navigate the issue.

“Christians have no more or less of a right to tell other people (civilly) how to think and live their life than anyone else,” he wrote. “We all have ideas that we think would make the world better; and we all have the right to contend for these views respectfully. In a truly pluralistic society we should both have a right to free and civil speech. Gay people should be able to speak without fear of harassment and abuse, Christians should be able to speak without fear of it being labeled hate speech.”

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WHITE HOUSE/ PETE SOUZA

22 jun – 5 jul 2011

Will Attorney General Eric Holder (r., looking on as the president exits the House chamber after his 2010 State of the Union address) apply the “undue hardship” concept articulated in the new Medicaid policy to the case of binational same-sex couples?

n politics

A Major Step on Medicaid Obama administration highlights ways to protect assets of same-sex couples

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

W

ith the House of Representatives in GOP hands and the number of Republicans in the Senate sufficient to prevent a vote on anything they solidly oppose, the Obama administration is limited in what it can currently deliver for the LGBT community through legislative means.

But the administration’s process of scrutinizing existing statutes and regulations to figure out what might be achieved through Executive Branch actions –– an effort begun with a presidential instruction issued during LGBT Pride Month in 2009 –– continues.

The most recent is a June 10 letter from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to state Medicaid directors, advising them of circumstances in which their programs may voluntarily take account of same-sex partner relationships in ways advantageous to gay and lesbian couples receiving Medicaid.

“Medicaid gives states remarkable flexibility to set these kinds of policies,” said Cindy Mann, the Centers’ deputy administrator, said in a written release.

“We want to assure states that they are within the law when they make the choice to extend equal financial rights and protections to all of their citizens receiving Medicaid services, regardless of sexual orientation.”

The first situation the letter addresses concerns a provision of the Social Security Act that allows states to impose liens on a Medicaid beneficiary’s property if a court determines benefits were improperly paid or if where that recipient is institutionalized and not expected to be able to return home. The statute specifies that states may not impose such

liens if that property is occupied by a spouse, a minor child, or a blind or disabled child of any age.

The administration’s letter suggests states could voluntarily decide not to impose liens on property occupied by a Medicaid recipient’s same-sex spouse or domestic partner. In fact, the Obama administration encourages states to amend their Medicaid plans to make this remedy explicit.

The second situation concerns the penalties imposed on Medicaid recipients who hasten their benefits eligibility by spending down their assets in transfers made at less than fair-market value. When the government discovers such transactions, it imposes penalties in the form of ineligibility time periods, but there are exceptions in cases of asset transfers to spouses and in certain “undue hardship” situations.

The federal government advises that transfers to same-sex spouses and domestic partners can be covered as such a hardship situation.

Finally, federal law lays out conditions under which state Medicaid programs can seek recovery against the estates of deceased Medicaid beneficiaries to recoup benefit expenses, but that action is authorized only if there is no surviving spouse or minor or disabled child.

Again, there is also an undue hardship exception, which the administration says states have the discretion to apply to surviving same-sex partners.

Though highly technical, these remedies can be crucial for families affected, and the Medicaid letter is another in a long and growing list of instances in which the Obama administration has combed existing law and regulations to

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n legal

Sweeping Bankruptcy Court Rejection of DOMA Twenty judges in California find equal protection violation in barring gay couple’s joint petition

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

I

The Church of the Transfiguration Little Church Around the Corner

The Right Rev’d. Andrew St. John, Rector 1 East 29th Street, Btwn Madison & Fifth Ave. 212-684-6770 Sundays 8:30 AM, 11:00 AM, 6:00 PM (June thru September) www.littlechurch.org Inclusive Congregation SUPPORTS GAY PRIDE

n a highly unusual action, 20 federal bankruptcy judges in the Central District of California have joined together in an opinion denying a motion by the United States trustee to dismiss a bankruptcy petition jointly filed by a same-sex married couple.

The judges found that granting the motion would deny the couple’s equal protection rights under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution.

The June 13 ruling regarding the bankruptcy petition of Gene Douglas Balas and Carlos A. Morales, pending before Bankruptcy Judge Thomas B. Donovan, holds that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denies federal recognition to marriages by same-sex couples, is unconstitutional when evaluated in the context of the federal Bankruptcy Code.

Los Angeles attorney Robert J. Pfister of the firm of Klee, Tuchin, Bogdanoff & Stern, which represents Balas and Morales, noted that the ruling came from the overwhelming majority of bankruptcy judges in California’s Central District –– 20 out of 24 –– which encompasses the Los Angeles metropolitan area and surrounding counties. That district has the highest volume of consumer bankruptcy cases in the nation, and is home to thousands of same-sex couples who wed during the five months prior to Proposition 8’s enactment and whose marriages remain valid. That is a crucial point, since the Balas/ Morales decision rested on their marriage –– which took place in August 2008 –– being valid under California law.

The Bankruptcy Code allows two debtors to jointly file a bankruptcy petition only if they are married to each other.

The judges’ ruling noted that the two men sought bankruptcy protection after “numerous episodes of illness, hospitalization, and extended periods of unemployment.” The US trustee, who represents the government’s interest in bankruptcy proceedings, filed a motion to dismiss the petition based on DOMA. The court noted that apart from the DOMA issue, the two men had satisfied all the other “trustee objections” to their petition. Their proposed plan for reorganizing their finances “is eligible for confirmation but for the pending Motion to Dismiss.”

According to the court, the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, the

Republican-dominated panel that stepped up to defend DOMA after the Obama Justice Department stated it would no longer defend the 1996 statute’s constitutionality, made a last-minute oral request to delay the hearing on the motion to dismiss so it could decide whether it would attempt to intervene.

Balas and Morales did not object, but apparently the House failed to follow up in a timely way.

The judges found the government’s “non-response to the Debtors’ challenges” to be “noteworthy.”

The ability of same-sex married couples to file a joint bankruptcy petition has become a recurring issue. Early last month, Bankruptcy Judge Cecelia G. Morris of the Southern District of New York rejected a trustee’s motion to dismiss, but found it was not necessary to consider DOMA’s constitutionality since the motion failed to address the grounds for doing so under the Bankruptcy Code.

As a practical matter, she ruled, granting the motion would simply require that everyone involved in the case re-do the substantial amount of work already completed.

On May 31, Bankruptcy Judge Michael S. McManus of the Eastern District of California issued a similar opinion, again sidestepping the DOMA question.

Perhaps in reaction to this repetitiveness, Judge Donovan and his colleagues decided to go the extra step and tackle DOMA head-on, producing a scholarly opinion that gave great weight to Attorney General Eric Holder’s February 23 letter to House Speaker John Boehner explaining the Justice Department’s new position on the law’s constitutionality.

In that letter, Holder contended that discrimination based on sexual orientation merits “heightened scrutiny,” a standard of judicial review under which the law in question is presumed unconstitutional unless the government presents very strong policy justifications for it. Holder concluded that DOMA’s Section 3 cannot survive that standard of review.

Although the Justice Department is no longer defending Section 3, until it is repealed it is bound to enforce it, which is why US trustees continue challenging joint bankruptcy petitions by married same-sex couples.

The Central District’s bankruptcy

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judges not only endorsed Holder’s view, they also cited binding precedent from the 9th Circuit, in which they serve, from Major Margaret Witt’s successful challenge to the Air Force’s discharge of her under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In that case, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that heightened scrutiny was appropriate and that the government could not meet that standard in defending the discharge. (That case has been settled, and the government will not appeal.)

Pointing to the 9th Circuit’s “direction” in the Witt case, the judges found that dismissing the Balas-Morales bankruptcy petition would not advance any of the “governmental interests” identified in the legislative history of DOMA as it moved through Congress in 1996. Indeed, there is no evidence Congress considered the

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recognize and provide benefits to samesex partners and their families.

Because of the Defense of Marriage Act, the administration’s efforts remain limited, and some gay rights opponents may argue Obama is pushing the limits and has perhaps gone over the line. Election of a Republican president in 2012 could lead to a pullback in reforms the president has initiated, just as the Bush

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27

practical implications –– or even the possibility –– of DOMA denying married same-sex couples the ability to file a joint bankruptcy petition.

After carefully examining how sexual orientation discrimination meets the criteria for heightened judicial scrutiny, the bankruptcy judges hedged their bets, concluding that even under a less demanding test –– putting the burden on the challengers to show that the government has no rational basis for DOMA’s application in the bankruptcy context –– the law would fail.

In laying out its analysis, the court offered an extraordinarily passionate criticism of Congress’ passage of DOMA. “Although individual members of Congress have every right to express their views and the views of their constituents with respect to their religious beliefs and principles and their personal standards

of who may marry whom, this court cannot conclude that Congress is entitled to solemnize such views in the laws of this nation in disregard of the views, legal status, and living arrangements of a significant segment of our citizenry that includes the Debtors in this case,” the court wrote. “To do so violates the Debtors’ right to equal protection of those laws embodied in the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.”

Concluding its opinion, the court cited Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas’ majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 decision that struck down a ban on the sale of contraceptives to married adults.

“We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights –– older than our political parties, older than our school system,” Douglas wrote. “Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse,

hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not in political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any.”

Donovan wrote, “No one expressed the Debtors’ view as pertinent to this simple bankruptcy case more eloquently and profoundly than Justice William O. Douglas.”

It will now be interesting to see whether Boehner and his majority in the House Advisory Group decide to attempt an appeal to the 9th Circuit, a court that recently upheld the application of heightened scrutiny in the Witt Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell case. One suspects that the 9th Circuit is not the place where the House Republican leadership would want this issue decided.

administration retreated on the protections for gay federal employees earlier pioneered by the Clinton administration.

One area, however, where the administration has yet to move decisively is in dealing with the status of binational same-sex partners. Although it has voluntarily suspended deportation of surviving different-sex spouses of US nationals –– pending legislative action to deal with a gaping hole in existing law –– it has refused to commit to halt-

ing removal of same-sex partners, insisting that any definitive action must await comprehensive immigration reform.

As with Medicaid, however, DOMA could be construed as not being an absolute bar to exercising discretion under the rubric of “undue hardship.” In South Africa, for example, the Constitutional Court ruled this is an issue involving the right of intimate association of a citizen who does not want to be forcibly parted from his or her same-sex partner. The

Department of Justice could adopt similar reasoning to suspend deportations in cases of documented committed samesex partners.

Perhaps Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent intervention in one such deportation case –– involving a couple in a New Jersey civil union –– suggests this other shoe is soon to drop, but so far the Justice Department has denied that action signals a more general change in policy.

22 jun - 5 jul 2011

28/ Legal

Still Defamatory After All These Years Bound by stodgy precedent, NY trial judge finds false statement about homosexuality actionable

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

A

New York State trial judge has refused to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought by a man who claims he was falsely accused of being gay or bisexual and actively engaging in homosexual activity.

Broome County Supreme Court Justice Phillip R. Rumsey, finding himself bound by an intermediate appellate precedent with no ruling on the question from the state’s highest bench, wrote that New York law still regards a “false imputation of homosexuality” as being defamatory per se, so the plaintiff can maintain his lawsuit without having to allege any financial damages.

According to Rumsey’s June 8 opinion, the plaintiff, Mark Yonaty, was dating Kara Geller.

The defendant, Jean Mincolla, an acquaintance of Geller’s,

heard Yonaty was gay or bisexual and was “actively engaging in homosexual conduct,” the judge wrote. Concerned that Yonaty’s conduct “posed a danger” to Geller but also feeling she didn’t know the other woman well enough to say anything to her directly, she related the information to Ruthanne Koffman, asking that she tell Geller’s mother, with whom she was friends.

When all this got back to Geller, she br oke up with Yonaty.

Denying that he is gay or bisexual, Yonaty sued Mincolla, alleging defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Mincolla, in turn, sued Koffman seeking indemnification for her having repeated Mincolla’s statement to Geller’s mother.

Koffman and Mincolla each moved to dismiss the complaint.

Under defamation law, a plaintiff typically must allege an actual injury –– something of economic value. But all Yonaty claimed was that Geller stopped dating him. As a result, the only way he could prevail is by saying the allegations about his sexuality constituted per se defamation –– a statement presumed to cause significant harm to his reputation even without any financial loss.

Under traditional English common law, the “false imputation of homosexuality” qualified because gay sexual conduct was a felony, a precedent that New York trial and intermediate appellate courts long honored.

The Court of Appeals has never taken up the question.

Over the past 45 years, meanwhile, there have been significant changes in the legal view of sodomy and homosexuality in the state. In 1967, consensual sodomy was reduced from a

felony to a misdemeanor. Then, beginning in the 1970s, a long series of Court of Appeals rulings undermined the presumption that imputing homosexuality harms a person’s reputation –– by allowing an openly gay man to be admitted to practice law in New York, even with a sodomy conviction from another state; in finding that Lambda Legal sufficiently served the public interest by allowing it to be incorporated as a charitable non-profit corporation; by ruling the misdemeanor sodomy law unconstitutional, as well as the law against loitering for the purpose of soliciting “deviate sexual intercourse” in the case of a man suggesting to another man in a public place they go to a private place to have sex; by interpreting adoption law to allow an adult to adopt his or her same-sex partner’s child; and by concluding that state human rights law prevents a

medical school from excluding a student’s same-sex partner from living with her in married student housing.

On top of this, the Legislature reformed the sodomy and solicitation laws, though only in the new century, in belated response to the Court of Appeals’ decisions, and has banned discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation.

Openly gay politicians have been elected to both houses of the Legislature and many local legislative bodies, now serve as judges in the state’s courts, and have received appointments to a wide array of high executive branch positions.

Many public and private sector employers in the state now provide benefits to the same-sex partners and spouses of their

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30/ Legal

Challenge to Prop 8 Judge’s Impartiality Nixed Federal judge finds Vaughn Walker’s status as partnered gay man irrelevant

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

I

n a pair of opinions released on June 15, Chief US District Judge James Ware of the Northern District of California denied a motion by the Proponents of Proposition 8 –– the group defending the 2008 referendum –– to set aside last summer’s ruling in which nowretired Chief Judge Vaughan Walker struck down the ban on gay marriage.

The Proponents had argued Walker, a gay man with a longterm partner, “stood in the shoes” of the two married samesex couples who are the plaintiffs challenging Prop 8; thus, they asserted, he had a conflict of interest requiring his recusal.

Ware also denied a motion by the Proponents to require all parties to surrender copies of the video and audio recordings of the trial that are in their possession. The Proponents have been sensitive about the possibility that those recordings could be publicly aired, but both sides, given the recordings for purposes of preparing their cases, have been instructed not to distribute them.

The Proponents filed their motion regarding Walker this spring, when, shortly after retiring, the judge told some reporters that he was gay and had been living with a same-sex partner for ten years. Walker’s sexuality and possible partnered status had been widely rumored –– the San Francisco Chronicle reported on him being gay very early in the ramp-up to the litigation –– but the Proponents never raised any question about it until after they lost the case and the judge came out.

They argued that his failure to disclose these personal facts prior to the trial bolstered their argument he was biased in the plaintiffs’ favor.

The Proponents repeatedly insisted they were not arguing that gay judges should automatically be disqualified from sitting in any case raising gay rights issues, instead emphasizing that Walker’s long-term relationship gave him personal interest in the case since it could lead to his own marriage.

The impartiality of out gay retired Judge Vaughn Walker in last year’s Proposition 8 trial has been upheld by his replacement in the litigation.

Ware noted that this appears to be the first time the argument has been made in court that a judge should have disclosed his sexual orientation and partnership status or else recused himself from a case. Litigants have, however, attempted to disqualify minority and female judges from hearing civil rights cases raising issues of sex and race discrimination, and to knock out judges of particular religions from hearing cases involving issues on which their denominations have taken a strong position.

That body of precedent strongly supports Ware’s conclusion that these personal status considerations, by themselves, are not sufficient to require recusal.

Federal law on the question states that a judge should “disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” and where he or she “has a financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”

The Proponents argued that given Walker’s status as a gay man with a long-term partner, his impartiality might reasonably be questioned and he has

an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.

Responding to that argument, Ware wrote that “the fact that a federal judge shares a fundamental characteristic with a litigant, or shares membership in a large association such as a religion, has been categorically

resisted the idea that members of large social groups –– such as women, African Americans, and Latinos –– should be disqualified from judging in any case where the rights of those groups to fair treatment is at issue.

Any other rule, Ware wrote, would lead to a “standard that required recusal of minority judges in most, if not all, civil rights cases. Congress could not have intended such” a result in enacting the laws that govern recusal.

Responding to Proponents’ argument that Walker had “a markedly greater interest in a case challenging restrictions on same-sex marriage than the interest held by the general public,” Ware found it inconsistent with “general principles of constitutional adjudication to presume that a member of a minority group reaps a greater benefit from application of the substantive protections of our Constitution than would a member of the majority.” Under this view, every member of society has an interest in seeing constitutional values protected.

Ware drew an analogy to a 9th Circuit ruling rejecting a recusal challenge to Catholic judges sitting on a case where an abortion clinic sued protesters blocking

The starting point of the analysis is the presumption that a judge is impartial, placing a heavy burden to demonstrate otherwise. rejected by federal courts as a sole basis for requiring a judge to recuse her or himself.”

Noting that Walker is one of many unmarried California same-sex couples, he found that courts have held that “in light of the attenuated nature of non-pecuniary interests held by a judge as a general member of the public or a large community, ‘courts also have concluded that no personal bias or reasonable doubt about the judges’ impartiality exists in these circumstances.’”

For example, courts have

access for patients. The court there found unworkable a test that would premise disqualification on how “fervently” a particular Catholic judge followed the Church’s teachings on abortion.

Ware also pointed to the case of an African-American judge who prevailed in his refusal to step aside in a school desegregation lawsuit, even though he had school-age children who might be affected by the outcome.

The starting point of the analysis, he wrote, is the presumption that a judge is impartial,

placing a heavy burden on the party seeking recusal to demonstrate otherwise. The question isn’t whether some portion of the public questions a judge’s impartiality, but rather whether an objective person with full knowledge of the circumstances and the presumption that judges are professionally neutral would nevertheless conclude the judge can’t be impartial.

Ware rejected the notion that such an observer would conclude that Walker “must be so interested in marrying [his partner] that he would be unable to exhibit the impartiality which, it is presumed, all federal judges maintain.” He also dismissed the argument that Walker’s silence throughout the trial about his relationship with his partner could be construed to undermine the presumption of impartiality.

Indeed, Ware wrote, had Walker felt compelled to disclose this kind of personal information, he could be setting a “pernicious precedent” that would be “detrimental to the integrity of the judiciary,” as it would require judges to undergo extensive personal disclosure in every case.

Although Ware does not come right out and say it, the bottom line is that there is no more reason to assume that straight judges are unbiased in gay rights cases than there is to assume that gay judges are biased.

In the second opinion, Ware noted that both sides had been given videos of last year’s Prop 8 trial for their use during that proceeding and as they prepare for the appeal hearings. The accompanying order prohibited public distribution of the tapes, and he found no reason to doubt that stricture would be honored.

Throughout the Prop 8 litigation, particularly when the issue of televising the trial was argued, the Proponents have consistently fought against the wider public having the ability to see what went on in the courtroom.

Ware put off until August 29 a counter-motion by the plaintiffs asking that they be allowed to distribute the trial videos.

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32/ Community

Israeli Occupation Critics Occupy Center Queer group terming treatment of Palestinians “apartheid” defies ban on its meetings

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employees, and in the past few years, state government agencies and the courts have recognized same-sex marriages contracted out of state for benefits eligibility purposes. As this issue of Gay City News goes to press, the Legislature seems poised to enact marriage equality.

In light of all that, is it still credible for New York’s courts to maintain a doctrine under which falsely calling somebody gay is presumed to damage their reputation sufficiently to allow them to sue for damages without showing any economic loss?

In 2009, US District Judge Denny Chin

executive director, said Siegebusters was barred because it “was not LGBT focused” and the party was “an incredibly controversial and contentious event.”

Queers For an Open LGBT Center formed on March 21 to press the Center to reverse the ban, hold open board meetings, and re-admit Siegebusters.

presided over a lawsuit filed by Howard K. Stern, the lawyer and former boyfriend of the late Anna Nicole Smith, against an author who wrote, in a biography of Smith, that Stern had engaged in gay sex.

The judge faced the question of whether Stern would have to show financial damage to uphold his claim. Deciding a case governed by New York State common law, Chin would typically have looked to Court of Appeals precedent on the question.

Since none existed, he had to surmise what that bench would do if faced with the issue, and concluded it would not treat the false imputation of homosexuality as being per se defamation.

Meanwhile, two of the four Appellate Departments in the state have issued recent rulings clinging to the old doctrine.

Having lost the rationale of criminality, those rulings relied on the remaining anti-gay sentiment in some segments of society to justify treating the false imputation of homosexuality as presumptively damaging to a person’s reputation.

Since there is no split among the Appellate Departments on this question, a trial judge anywhere in New York is bound by the precedent.

Even while upholding Yonaty’s right to proceed with his defamation claims, Rumsey found that his factual allega-

tions were not sufficient to claim intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Bad as spreading harmful gossip may be, wrote Rumsey, “it is not so outrageous in character or extreme in degree as to be ‘regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community,’” the Court of Appeals’ most recent formulation of the standard.

To defend against the defamation claims, Mincolla and Koffman would have to show that their statements were true. That could lead their lawyers to retain private investigators to build a dossier on Yonaty’s sexual activities. Should the law be encouraging this?

GAY CITY NEWS

D

espite being banned from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA) held an hour-long meeting there on June 8.

“The Center’s choice between repression and openness has proven too much of a burden to bear,” said Pauline Park, a member of Queers For an Open LGBT Center, at the start of the unauthorized QAIA gathering. “It is not the Center’s role to ban queer organizing.”

On May 25, the Center allowed the group, which opposes Israeli government policies toward Palestinians, to rent space for three meetings. QAIA met at the West 13th Street building for the first time on May 26. The group “conformed to the Center’s application guidelines and signed its non-discrimination agreement,” the Center acknowledged in its June 2 statement announcing the ban.

Opponents of QAIA spent the week following that first meeting urging groups, individuals, and donors to contact the Center and ask it to reverse the decision, which is what it did on June 2.

The Center also declared an “indefinite moratorium” on renting to groups that “organize around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” when it announced the QAIA ban.

In response, QAIA said it would hold the June 8 and July 5 meetings that were part of its contract with the Center despite the ban.

The June 8 meeting, which drew roughly 40 people, was held in the Center’s lobby, with QAIA members sitting on the floor and leaning against the walls. The members gave leaflets to people entering the Center for other events, and they held signs bearing messages such as “Racism Is A Queer Issue” and “Solidarity With Palestinian Queers.”

QAIA members also discussed how to continue pressuring the Center to end the ban it announced on June 2 and how to get it to adopt policies such as public board meetings.

The Center staffers who sit at the main desk immediately across from the front entrance made no comment during the meeting, and Robert A. Woodworth, the Center’s director of meeting and conference services and capital projects, stood at that desk for roughly 30 minutes watching the QAIA meeting.

There was no sign of a police presence either inside or outside of the Center during the QAIA event.

The QAIA members discussed their appearance in the June 5 Queens Pride Parade and Festival and their planned appearances in the June 11 Brooklyn Pride March and the June 26 Pride March in Manhattan.

At the close of the meeting, the members agreed that they would hold their July 5 meeting at the Center.

One man briefly interrupted the QAIA meeting saying, “The whole meeting is being done in a way that is not safe.” He added, “My life was saved by Israel.”

The current ban follows an earlier controversy over the Center’s decision to deny space to the Siegebusters Working Group, another group that opposes Israeli government policies toward Palestinians.

Siegebusters held regular meetings at the Center beginning in August 2010, but its plans for a March 5 party to mark the end of Israeli Apartheid Week –– an annual worldwide protest aimed at the Jewish state –– and to raise funds to pay for boats to confront the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip drew boycott threats from Center donors.

The Center barred the party and banned Siegebusters from any further meetings there.

At a March 13 town hall meeting on that ban, Glennda Testone, the Center’s

Posters at the June 8 QAIA meeting criticized the LGBT Community Center’s ban on organizing meetings about the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

GAY CITY NEWS

BY DUNCAN OSBORNE

Pauline Park addresses an unauthorized meeting of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid held in the lobby of the LGBT Community Center on June 8.

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34/ Pride

Rain Fell and Gay Beer Flowed

DONNA ACETO

WINNIE McCROY

Showers put a damper but not a stopper on 15th annual Brooklyn Pride

Participants in Brooklynâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pride Parade included Borough President Marty Markowitz, the Lambda Independent Democrats joined by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and Comptroller John Liu, grand marshal Carl Siciliano of the Ali Forney Center, and the Dykes on Bikes.

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DONNA ACETO

DONNA ACETO

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DONNA ACETO

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The Brooklyn Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rugby Football Squad.

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What makes Brooklyn Pride unique is that among the five boroughsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Pride events, it is the only one to host a night parade.

LGBT and affirming foster parents needed.

Call 311 or search nycfoster at nyc.gov

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22 jun - 5 jul 2011

38/ Theater

Army of One In fight for equality, a fearless ex-Marine dares to ask and tell

I

t’s Pride Month in New York City, and that means stages are teeming with drag queens, queer fairytales, samesex stand-ups, and other fizzy fare.

But if you’re hungry for theater with a little more meat on its bones, I suggest you march on over to 59E59 Theaters, where the out-and-proud veteran Marine Jeff Key is performing his stirring solo show, “The Eyes of Babylon,” based on his journal entries while serving in Iraq.

If his name sounds familiar, it’s because the former lance corporal made history in 2004 when he came out — of the closet and against the Iraq war — on CNN and effectively ended his military career. Or maybe you saw the Showtime documentary a few years back, “Semper Fi,” which chronicled his fight for equality and

THE EYES OF BABYLON

59E59 Theaters 59 E. 59th St. Through Jul. 3 Tue.-Thu., Sun. at 7:15 p.m.

Fri.-Sat. at 8:15 p.m.

Sat. at 2:15 p.m. Sun. at 3:15 p.m. $35; 59e59.org Or 212-279-4200

peace.

And while President Barack Obama finally finagled a repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it’s not quite a done deal. After seven months, the military still hasn’t certified the formal end of the ban. In April, a gay serviceman was discharged from the Air Force, signaling that others are still at risk.

Even though Key’s multimedia piece was created several years ago and has played to bravos and ooh-rahs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Denver, and even the boonies of Kentucky, you wouldn’t have seen

COURTESY: MEHADI FOUNDATION

BY DAVID KENNERLEY

In “The Eyes of Babylon,” Jeff Key reflects on a band of brothers who supported him and the policies that betrayed him.

the show in New York. An earlier attempt was thwarted because producers didn’t see a pro-gay, anti-war monologue as a moneymaker. Finally, Key’s time has come.

The 46-year old actor and activist, who lives with his husband, Adam, in Salt Lake City,

recently spoke with Gay City News — in his disarming Alabama drawl — about the long road to New York, to LGBT equality, and to his own self-acceptance.

time of the 9/11 attacks. What motivated you to enlist?

JEFF KEY: Before 9/11, actually. I joined at age 34, and although the official cutoff is 28, I got a special waiver. To tell you the truth, I signed up in

DAVID KENNERLEY: You joined the military around the

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n theater

Screaming Queens A second play tackles Harvard’s gay purge of 1920

BY ANDY HUMM

“U

nnatural Acts,” chronicling how Harvard University kept the spirit of New England witch hunts alive with a swift and terrible expulsion of homosexual men through the infamous “Secret Court” of 1920, is bracketed by the question, “How many times must this happen?”

Conceived and directed by Tony Speciale in a collaborative writing process with members of his Plastic Theatre group, it gives these events of more than 90 years ago immediacy and resonance. Harvard isn’t purging gay students today, but plenty of American schools still are –– not to mention our military (still), most of our religious establishment, and families that would rather expel their LGBT children onto the streets than let them sully their homes.

The story was brought to light by an intrepid Harvard Crimson

UNNATURAL ACTS

Plastic Theatre Classic Stage Company 136 E. 13th St. Through Jul. 10 Tue.–Fri. at 8 p.m.

Sat.-Sun. at 2 p.m. $60-$65; classicstage.org Or 212-352-3101

reporter, Amit Paley, who found a reference to the court in the school’s archives in 2002 and worked assiduously to identify the victims when the university would only release files with redacted names.

William Wright wrote a book about the episode, “Harvard’s Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals.” Michael Van Devere, a Harvard Extension School graduate, made a film of it using Harvard undergraduates as actors.

Stan Richardson’s play on it, “Veritas,” was a hit at last year’s NY International Fringe Festival.

But “Unnatural Acts” captures the raw pain these men must have experienced better than anything I’ve seen on the subject. Indeed, primal screams play a central role. The scandal was sparked by the suicide of Cyril Wilcox, one of their set, before the play begins. And we

questions about their sex lives, right down to whether they masturbate. The sinister lighting is

by Justin Townsend, but it is true to the lighting these young men –– eight students, a recent graduate and an assistant professor — faced in the secret court, lit by one bulb according

Best are the interrogation scenes where the men are summoned one by one to answer questions about their sex lives. are reminded how some of the victims committed suicide — one almost immediately, another ten years later –– and others, with notable exceptions, were never allowed to fulfill their potentials.

Best are the interrogation scenes where the men are summoned one by one to answer

to accounts from the time.

Four “townies” from Boston not depicted in this play were also hauled before the panel and hounded out of jobs by Harvard at a time when sodomy was a crime. (That shouldn’t come as a shock –– consensual same-sex relations were a crime in Massachusetts until 1974,

New York until 1980, and 13 US states until 2003, when the Supreme Court struck them down.)

In its array of gay male characters, “Unnatural Acts” owes something to Mart Crowley’s “The Boys in the Band.” In its piercing cries of the men to save their good names, the debt is to Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” about the Salem witch trials but inspired by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s pinko Commie hunt of the 1950s.

These are not easy characters to keep track of in the first act –– ten young, white WASP males, one named Day, another Say. A scorecard might have helped. The men do come into focus, especially when they are answering to the tribunal –– played by members of the ensemble in shadow.

Some of the early scenes in their dorm rooms seemed

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22 jun - 5 jul 2011

40/ Theater

The Book of Maupin

BY ANDY HUMM

T

he creators of “The Book of Mor mon” took the story of the least hip people in the world –– Mormon missionaries –– and fashioned the funniest and most trenchant musical in decades.

At the venerable American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, “Tales of the City,” based on Armistead Maupin’s memorable stories and the terrific PBS adaptation about the countercultural residents of 28 Barbary Lane on Russian Hill, has been turned into a relatively uncool and conventional musical about love and acceptance of difference –– something done better by, say, “South Pacific” 60 years ago.

Its second act may be worth the wait, but the show isn’t worth the trip.

For the stage, many of the freaks and geeks of “Tales” are

TALES OF THE CITY

American Conservatory Theater 415 Geary St., San Francisco Through Jul. 24 $45 - $130; act-sf.org Or 415-834-3200

reduced to stereotypes bordering on the offensive –– which might be forgivable if they were also funny. But most of the jokes fall flat and the songs don’t hit. Instead of taking the potential liberation of live theater to push the boundaries that “Tales” broke when it was written for the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, we get a Disneyfied diorama of mid1970s San Francisco that is unlikely to make anyone long for that wonderful pre-AIDS era.

Most of Maupin’s hands are on deck –– cute gay Michael “Mouse” Tolliver (appealing Wesley Taylor), ingénue émigré Mary Ann Singleton (Betsy Wolfe, better in her corrupted

stage than her innocent one), and rebellious Mona Ramsey (Mary Birdsong). But for all the talk about sex, they don’t generate much heat.

Musical veteran Judy Kaye as landlady Anna Madrigal is a powerful stage presence and singer, but is more mother hen than the sardonic earth mother Maupin wrote and Olympia Dukakis embodied in the TV series. Anna’s romance with magnate Edgar Halcyon (another stage mainstay, Richard Poe, in fine form) is at the heart of this version and warms up the significantly better second act that is also enlivened by the appearance of salty madam Mother Mucca (a scabrous and hilarious Diane J. Findlay).

While most of the banal musical numbers by Jake Shears and John Garden of Scissor Sisters go on too long in the

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Courtesy of Act

Musical of “Tales of the City” doesn’t quite sing

Mary Ann Singleton (Betsy Wolfe) consoles Michael “Mouse” Tolliver (Wesley Taylor), who is struggling with coming out to his parents, in the musical adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City, currently in its premiere run in San Francisco.

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three-hour production, a bathhouse scene with some potential is cut short –– all those guys getting undressed for nothing. Douglas M. Schmidt’s multilevel set is more generic than anything saying “San Francisco,” and Larry Keigwin’s uninspired choreography doesn’t help the show take off either. Beaver Bauer’s costumes made it feel more like every day was Halloween than giving us a sense of people who lived and loved in these get-ups. The anti-gay characters –– from Midwestern parents to Anita Bryant herself –– are caricatured too.

The beauty of Maupin’s “Tales” is that it made oddballs full human beings. The musical makes many of the characters silly for the sake of some cheap laughs for the kinds of audiences that looks down on these kinds of people. If it were a House Ball, few would get points for the

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to strain at making the men amusing, especially Edward Say (Jess Burkle), reminiscent of Emery, the effeminate queen in “Boys.” It got a few laughs (mostly from audience members hoping for a comedy), but didn’t rise to the level of the witty dorm room exchanges that made “Brideshead Revisited” so delicious. A subsequent wild party scene

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ultimate accolade –– “realness.” And this is surprising coming from librettist Jeff Whitty, who did such a terrific job on the book for “Avenue Q,” where he imbued puppets with heart and soul.

This celebration of a lost San Francisco is selling in its hometown, but I doubt it is Broadway-bound even though it has a lot in common with some of the witless fare that makes it to New York these days –– from the “People in the Picture” to “Spider-Man.” Perhaps its makers felt they had to be too true to the source material for Bay Area audiences who grew up with these stories rather than taking theatrical chances.

Could anything save this “Tales”? I’d suggest a book by Douglas Carter Beane, but he is better at turning the banal (a movie like “Xanadu”) into high camp. If the story is already pretty campy, what can be done to generate a new way of seeing it? I hope they figure it out. (Word

is that it will get a London staging before a try for Broadway is considered.)

The LGBT themes in this show might not be very compelling or new in this show, but they are there in abundance to overflowing –– and for that we should be grateful. hile in San Francisco, I was grateful to catch two shows that are worth the trip, both of them starring that irrepressible lesbian, Gertrude Stein.

At the Contemporary Jewish Museum, “Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories,” about her life and work, runs through September 6. Gertrude, the Anna Madrigal of her day, is quoted as having said, “We are surrounded by homosexuals; they do all the good things in the arts.”

Indeed, her “second family” in the early 20th century was a group of young gay men that included Cecil Beaton, George

Platt Lynes, Virgil Thompson, Thornton Wilder, Marsden Hartley, and Charles Demuth.

The real blockbuster is “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, bringing together paintings discovered and nurtured

by Gertrude and her brothers Leo and Michael and the respective wives of all three.

Just for fun, go see Woody Allen’s wry “Midnight in Paris” with its clever portrayal of Stein’s salon. Then go to SFMOMA and wonder at all that groundbreaking art from the walls of the Steins’ Paris apartments recovered from the far corners of the globe, including some private collections, in this stupendous and exhilarating exhibition. “The Steins Collect” won’t make it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until February.

does better.

It’s a uniformly strong ensemble, but Nick Westrate is a standout as Ernest Roberts, the cynical wastrel son of a congressman and leader of group that went to his dorm room, Perkins 28, to taste of gay life.

The rendering of the witch hunt is positively chilling: the blunt, intrusive questions of the tribunal, the desperate attempts of the men at evasion,

the heated arguments among the gay targets on how to respond, the confessions, and the betrayals. Administrators were apparently given the names of 50 more homosexual students, but felt the expulsion of this group would keep the door shut on undergraduate closets for generations to come –– and they were right.

Eugene Cummings (a brilliantly focused performance by Brad Koed)

is the student who asks, “How many times must this happen?” and his searing, lengthy, emotional speech at the end left me limp with fury and sadness at the way gay lives are destroyed by powerful bigots. The coda, a recitation of the fate of these young men, left me even sadder.

Now, we can tell young LGBT people “It Gets Better”; then, exposure was ruin.

W

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42/ FIlm

Keep an Eye on Your Queen David Hyde Pierce, Clayne Crawford spin out astonishingly versatile chess game of a thriller

O

ut gay actor David Hyde Pierce rarely gets a leading role on screen. It is especially pleasing, then, to see him acting out —doing a wild pantomime eating, conga dancing, and fucking —as Warwick Wilson, the title character in “The Perfect Host.”

This nifty indie film has more twists than a bag of pretzels, which makes it so much fun.

That –– and the fact that the magnificent Pierce gives a tour de force performance. He is cowering one minute and swaggering the next. Another sequence has him mutilating himself — but his expression is utter glee.

The tightrope Pierce walks, seeing where Warwick will go next, is part of the film’s excitement.

“The Perfect Host” opens with John Taylor (Clayne Crawford) on the run from the law after a

THE PERFECT HOST

Directed by Nick Tomnay Magnolia Pictures Opens Jul. 1 Quad Cinema 34 W. 13th St. quadcinema.com

bank robbery. He happens upon Warwick’s house, an elegant, well-appointed Los Angeles residence with the requisite swimming pool. John inveigles his way inside with a phony story, as Warwick, an erudite, fussy man, prepares for guests about to arrive for a dinner party.

Hearing about John’s unfortunate situation — the stranger tells a sad sack story about lost luggage, being locked out of a relative’s house, and having been mugged — Warwick invites his unexpected visitor to stay for the party. More unexpected things, however, occur before any of the guests arrive.

MAGNOLIA PICTURES

BY GARY M. KRAMER

Clayne Crawford and David Hyde Pierce in Nick Tomnay’s “The Perfect Host.”

First, John takes his host hostage, making “The Perfect Host” a taut two-hander. In response, Warwick unleashes a surprise or two on his rude

guest, and the balance of power shifts. So does the tone of this peculiar film.

Writer and director Nick Tomnay, expanding his prize-

winning Australian short, introduces a surreal trick at this point that makes the turnabout

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22 jun - 5 jul 2011

44/ Dance

Arrival of the Danes

BY GUS SOLOMOS JR.

T

he Royal Danish Ballet appears at Lincoln Center, where its new artistic director, Nikolaj Hübbe, performed as a principal with New York City Ballet from 1992 until retiring to direct RDB in 2008.

The company, which has not appeared in New York since 1988, is best known for preserving the works of renowned ballet master August Bournonville, who exerted a major influence on male dancing in Denmark and beyond with a style that exploited fast beats of the feet, agonizingly difficult balances, and breezy, elastic jumps.

Contained muscular control and elegant understatement characterize the Danish style, rather than the sweeping spatial momentum and bravura of the Russians. Perhaps that’s because the 250-year-old theater where Bournonville devel-

oped his technique was relatively small. As “Bournonville Variations” begins, a banner bearing one of his quotes about dance being an art because of its technical discipline hangs from a lowered lighting batten.

A dozen men enter in trench coats and boots, which they immediately shed, and launch into dancing. The hokey opening adds nothing in terms of turning the piece –– a selection of Bournonville’s daily class exercises collected by Hans Beck and staged by Hübbe and principal dancer Thomas Lund –– into a showcase of his technique’s defining elements.

In this mercilessly exposed work, where the slightest misstep is vividly apparent, one dancer got off to a shaky start, hopping slightly on balances and dropping to flat foot on turns, instead of remaining on his toe. In fact, although their jumping turns (tours en l’aire)

COSTIN RADU

A tradition of control and understatement returns after 23 years

The Royal Danish Ballet’s Alban Lendorf and Alexander Staeger.

are impressively clean, landing in tight fifth positions, they do launch some simple double pirouettes off vertical.

In 19 short, continuous sections, the men in tights, handsome jerkins, and kilts

by Annette Nørgaard, demon-

strate elevation and control with French-named steps like Petit and Grand Allegro, Brisé, Enchainement, and Batterie.

Watching six men in perfect unison execute a single turn ending with a side leg extension has the power of an Olympic event.

Program A, seen on June 15, opened with Flemming Flindt’s “The Lesson” (1964). Flindt directed the RDB from 1966 to 1978. His ballets in a modern idiom attracted new audiences

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n film

Cinematically Queer and Compelling Gay film industry New Yorkers talk about what works forthem

BY GARY M. KRAMER

I

f moviegoers look to the silver screen as a mirror –– if you are what you watch and you watch what you are — the queer community is rich today in the number and range of characters and films that provide images that are positive, memorable, or both.

As we celebrate Pride this month, gay New Yorkers involved in the film

fabulous, and entirely individual.

“I’m thinking of freaks like ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch,’ who are unapologetic, unabashed, and unafraid of taking the wig down from the shelf. For me, Hedwig’s a rock star.”

Sandon Berg, the writer and producer of the forthcoming drama “Morgan,” due out in 2012, also chose a cross-dressing character in identifying his film role model.

“The fantasy and safety of disguise

Michael Akers.

community discussed what they find inspiring out there.

For Jesse Archer, the screenwriter of “Violent Tendencies,” a comedy in which he also appeared, the idea of “belonging” within the broader society is anathema.

is one often explored in queer cinema,” he explained. “Although it’s not specifically a gay-themed film, ‘Tootsie’ pivots on the enchanting idea that you could cloak your identity in a large red wig, a sensible schoolteacher blouse, a no-nonsense below-the-knee skirt,

“I prefer strong-willed survivors who take oppression and struggle and turn it into something interesting.”

“So much of the culture wants desperately to integrate into the mainstream, and I can’t help but wonder if that is some kind of Stockholm Syndrome,” he said. “I prefer deviance.

Strong-willed survivors who take oppression and struggle and turn it into something interesting— glittery,

and a pair of oversized square glasses that cover the top half of your face like the mask of Zorro.”

That is just one example,” Berg continued.

“But if that drag outfit isn’t your

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Edward Miller.

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cup of tea, anything will do — as long as it makes you a bolder, braver, brassier you,” he said. “You can live your life — at least for a little while — free of all the expectations that others have. And most importantly, free of all the limitations you place on yourself. If you live in a well-structured movieland, like I like to do, while you’re living life as someone else, another person’s perspective is going to teach you what you need to know to live out and proud, brave enough to kiss the person you love.”

Berg’s partner and “Morgan” writer and director Michael Akers finds pride in a more traditional queer romance. “‘Big Eden’ is probably my most favorite go-to gay film,” he said. “You have this big ol’ romantic Native American, Eric Schweig, attempting to win over a cluelessly cute Arye Gross with

Jesse Archer.

his cooking. And the townspeople are trying to get the two guys together, too.

Super romantic and maybe just a little idealistic, but, hey, I’m a sucker for a love story. As a filmmaker, I’m always drawn more to the rural gay experience because it’s what I identify with.

Sure, the city has hot, smooth dance club boys, but give me a country boy with a long… drawl any day!”

Film Forum’s Adam Walker appreciates romantic queer films as well, but also musicals.

“As a closeted high school kid in Indiana, I used my mom’s credit card to order ‘Beautiful Thing’ and ‘Trick’ from the Columbia House catalogue,” he recalled. “For the record, I have since paid her back. While these movies certainly made me feel less alone in the world, and I still pay great respect and gratitude to their creators, I also realized at the time that they weren’t

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48/ Theater

Pride Shows

I

Joe Mantello and Tony-winner John Benjamin Hickey in “The Normal Heart.”

haven’t mastered the barcode, which is what they scan when you enter. You’ll get turned away, and be out the money.

So, now you know how to get there, what do you want to see? Here are some suggestions drawn from new shows that opened this season. Ticket availability is based on searches on June 14 for performances from June 22-28 from ticketing services for full-price seats.

THE BOOK OF MORMON It won the Tony and the Drama Desk A war ds, and deserved them. It’s profane but sweet, with an infectious score and commentary on our culture, faith, and the human con-

dition that is brilliantly original.

Eugene O’Neill Theatre, 230 W. 49th St. Tickets only through lottery or brokers.

THE NORMAL HEART A power ful and searing revival that will touch your heart, spark your intellect, and awaken the activist in you. The sublime writing and the heart-wrenching perfor mances make this perhaps the play to see as part of your Pride celebration.

John Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th St. Some side orchestra and mezzanine seats available. Premium seats available at $176.50 (telecharge.com, or 212-239-6200).

JOAN MARCUS

f you’re planning to see a show during Pride and you haven’t planned ahead, fear not.

There are lots of great shows, and there are tickets available.

What you’re going to have to decide is whether you are more committed to investing time or money.

For instance, if you want to see “The Book of Mormon,” you can either enter the lottery every day at the theater from 4 to 4:30 p.m., or you can buy tickets from a broker at twice the face value — or more — meaning a minimum of $300 a seat.

The best listing we’ve found for Broadway lotteries is at nytix.com. Search for “Broadway Lottery schedule.”

Many shows also offer premium tickets, with prices as much as 50-70 percent above the “standard” orchestra seating. These are sometimes available when other seats are not, though for many of the hottest shows, these also sell out quickly.

For brokers or resellers, you can search for the show you want, and most have a “find tickets” link that will take you to full-price tickets and brokers. You can try stubhub.com, too, but prepare yourself to be aghast at what some people

want for their tickets. Still, if someone is willing to pay for them… You can also try craigslist.org under “tickets,” where you’ll find brokers and individuals selling tickets.

One of the best deals in town, however, remains the TKTS booths (at 47th & Broadway, South Street Seaport, and Downtown Brooklyn at the Borough Hall plaza). You can find all the information on this at tdf. org. You won’t find tickets there for “Mormon” or “Wicked,” but recently we’ve seen “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, The Musical” up, as well as “Billy Elliot,” “Jerusalem,” “Anything Goes,” and “How to Succeed…” They take credit cards, too.

You can also go to the box offices; especially if you’re willing to buy single seats, you may find things on the same day.

Personally, I’ve had good luck from time to time getting house seats that have been turned back. You’ll pay full price but no additional fees. However, many shows, such as “War Horse,” have cancellation lines that form early.

Finally, a word of caution about buying tickets on the street: Some tickets may be legit, but there has been a spate of counterfeit ticket-selling in the past few months. Counterfeiters have faked the details about time and seating, but they

Rema Webb, Andrew Rannells, and Josh Gad in “The Book of Mormon.”

ANYTHING GOES The award-winning musical revival pulls out all the stops to dazzle you with song and dance.

Sutton Foster is the reason to see this show, and with a fantastic supporting cast and ensemble, you’ll have a great time.

Stephen Sondheim Theater, 124 West 43rd St. Some side orchestra and mezzanine seats available (telecharge.com, or 212-239-6200).

PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT, THE MUSICAL In two words: gay heaven.

Lavish costumes, over-the-top production values, and a score

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Joan marcus

BY CHRISTOPHER BYRNE

JOAN MARCUS

What to see — and how to get there — if your Pride plans include theater

The incomparable Sutton Foster and the cast of the revival “Anything Goes.”

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50/ Performance

Cool Heat

Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival proves that culture need not desert the city in summer HOT! FESTIVAL!

161A Chrystie St. btwn. Rivington & Delancey Sts. Jun. 24-Aug. 6 Details at hotfestival.org

BY WINNIE McCROY

Zoe Woodworth

E

ven as Pride Month reaches its Fifth Avenue parade climax, Dixon Place is just starting to heat up.

On June 24, the iconic Lower East Side performance space kicks off the 20th annual HOT! Festival, the oldest continuously running queer performance and culture festival of its kind.

From dance to theater to spoken word performances, this year’s HOT! Festival will showcase Dixon Place’s newly–renovated theater space, as well as some truly talented performers, including Marga Gomez, Tom Judson, James Scruggs, Victoria Libertore, and even longtime political player David Mixner,.

“I love the HOT! Festival because it’s really a party every night — and it’s our most successful program,” Ellie Covan, the performance venue’s found-

Dancers perform in Nina Morrison’s “Girl Adventure (Excerpt).”

er said. “Of course, there’s always plenty of homoeroticism to go around, no matter what your pleasure.”

The festival hub is Covan’s state-of-the-art performance space at 161A Chrystie Street, between Rivington and Delancey, that features a 120-seat main stage theater for large

events and a lounge for smaller, more intimate performances.

From free events to ticketed events, the festival offers performances seven days a week, through August 6.

Author, political strategist, and civil rights activist David Mixner honors his promise to help Dixon Place and the Ali Forney Center, which provides housing and social services to LGBTQ homeless youth, by staging a July 11 benefit performance of “The Front Porch: An Evening With David Mixner.” An

Appalachian storyteller David Mixner.

ed to recreate that art by telling the history of our community through the story of our gay struggle, plus others like antiwar, civil rights, and the evolution of a generation.”

Mixner continued, “We lost so many storytellers because of AIDS, a whole generation.

And these youth don’t have any idea where they come from, that their history is fueled by the bravery and courage of LGBT citizens everywhere. So I hope this show relates that history, like my grandfather did for me.”

Judson noted that he will bare skin, saying, “I’ve never had a problem with gratuitous nudity…

Y’know, to sell tickets.”

Tom Judson opens this year’s HOT! Festival.

encore performance is presented on July 18.

Describing it as “Prairie Home Companion meets ACT UP,” Mixner said that the sold-out show has already underwritten the cost of the festival.

“I grew up with no electricity until I was nine or ten,” Mixner recalled. “On Sundays, elders would gather on the front porch and translate our history through exaggerated storytelling. I am an old Appalachian storyteller, given this lost art from my grandfather. So I decid-

In a similar vein is “Milk Not Jails Ice Cream Social,” an “old fashioned homosexual ice cream social” on July 24, where you can learn what milk and jails have in common.

The festival opens on June 24 and 25 with “The Tom Judson Show,” a sophisticated, sexy songfest featuring a “great trove of terrific, little-known songs, some new songs… some stories from my crazy life thrown in, and some give-and-take with the audience.”

The hunky Judson noted

that he will bare skin, saying, “I’ve never had a problem with gratuitous nudity… Y’know, to sell tickets.”

From July 14 – 30, “Tickets to Manhood” will explore a boy’s journey from gang violence and imprisonment to religion and marriage. Performer James Scruggs said, “There is no formal rite of passage for boys entering adulthood in America today. The men of ‘Tickets’ made choices that greatly affected the kind of adults that they eventually became… They don’t apologize for their choices. In fact, they explore them in great detail. A marine who returns from war, a trained killer asks himself who he is now. All the men ponder what made them a man, when that occurred, and what kind of man they are currently.”

On June 28, Nick Levya takes up the mic with “Fuck Your Musical,” a night of musical comedy and character vignettes about people in positions of power .

“I am stone cold excited to be in the HOT! Fest this year,” said Levya. “‘Fuck Your Musical’ is the first musical written with tops in mind. Bottoms will definitely love it too. It’s got plenty of musical theatre nerdage in it, but I think tops will see it and think, ‘Finally!’ I’m stoked to see

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22 jun - 5 jul 2011

BRUCE PAVLOW

BRUCE PAVLOW

BRUCE PAVLOW

52/ Books

Residents of Survival House documented in Bruce Pavlow’s new book.

An Early Queer Refuge Bruce Pavlow resurrects his record of an LGBT safe house in ‘70s San Francisco

BY GREGORY MONTREUIL

“S

urvival House 1977: 758 Haight Street San Francisco,” a new book by Bruce Pavlow that is engaging –– both nostalgic and still relevant –– combines photographs and interviews related to this short-lived, late 1970s sanctuary for LGBT people.

Survival House provided a refuge where people who would otherwise be homeless could feel safe and accepted, offering the social services that allowed them to regroup and move ahead with their lives.

Pavlow, as a senior at the University of California at Berkeley in 1977, conducted interviews and captured the poetic chaos of the house and its inhabitants through color photos. A black and white video piece was also created. The new book is subtitled “Other Tales of the City.”

Queer people from all over the country gravitated to San Francisco in the 1970s as it became renowned for its accepting attitude toward gays and sexual freedom generally. Survival House was home to as many as 47 people who benefited from 24-hour services, including food, and referral counseling on issues such as drug and alcohol treatment, vocational rehabilitation, education, legal help, veterans’ assistance, and permanent housing.

The book includes close-up photos of handwritten and typed signs and forms that convey a poignant portrait of life there. One sign reads, “In return for Housing Daily your host may require you

SURVIVAL HOUSE 1977: 758 Haight Street San Francisco

By Bruce Pavlow Self-published in limited edition $24.95; amazon.com

to share up to 3 hours of your creative work energy. (This obligation comes first in your daily schedule).”

The book’s many photos of daily life at 758 Haight documents a diverse group of outcasts sharing a rambling Victorian house –– engaged in a variety of activities from playing monopoly to exchang-

anymore.”

The educational system failed LGBT youth then in a way it still too often does, but Attila found relief at Survival House.

“I don’t feel so lonely because there are so many people around, you know?,” he explained. “So I think that’s good.”

Another resident, Jonathan, tells of living in a bathhouse for six months as he struggled to make money hustling.

Tom, a survivor of a difficult childhood in which he faced teasing and bullying, spent eight weeks on the street eating out of garbage cans before finding Sur-

Another resident, Jonathan, tells of living in a bathhouse for six months as he struggled to make money hustling. ing friendly hugs and even more intimate moments –– at a unique moment in queer American history.

Other photos focus more intently on the unique individuals drawn to Survival House. In one solemn shot, a transgender resident sits with legs crossed in an armchair, smoking and staring into space.

Pavlow’s numerous interviews tell of the difficult circumstances that brought residents to 758 Haight Street, and what they gained by staying there.

“I was harassed a lot –– an awful lot,” Attila says of his time in school. “You know, to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. So I just quit… I wanted to finish school but couldn’t concentrate

vival House.

After nine month of staying there, Janis said, “It helped me a lot, now I have new friends because I used to be the type that moved from city to city.”

Bobby talked about the camaraderie he found: “The other thing I like about the house is the opportunity that it has given me to meet gay people. I mean you begin to see that being gay is just a part of you –– just a portion of your life.”

Another resident explained the community he experienced at Survival House saying, “I was very lonely at the time, and I needed someone to talk to. And I think of it as sort of like this is my family now in a way.”

In a predominately male environment,

Fanny explained, “Guys are really nice to me here. While you have to survive on a materialist level, I think it’s a good name for Survival House. They help you eat and crash. And at a mental level, you have to deal with so many things and people. When you can survive here, you can survive anywhere else.”

The wisdom of age is evident in an interview with Carl, an older resident who arrived in San Francisco from Cleveland after his antique store went bankrupt. Asked what being gay meant to him, he responded by talking about how much the queer community has to contribute to society.

“So gay to me means being a person like anybody else,” he said.

The book culminates with emotional photos documenting San Francisco’s June 1977 Gay Pride Parade, which came just weeks after Anita Bryant had successfully campaigned to repeal the Dade County, Florida gay rights law.

Rallying in a show of community solidarity, 200,000 people turned out that June in San Francisco, years and years before pride celebrations became the choreographed events they are today.

In today’s politics, painful belt tightening threatens the safety net, the value of which many critics of government question in the first place. Pavlow’s book is a welcome reminder of the blessings a safe space and community can offer people facing complicated circumstances. Without the help of Survival House, it is difficult to imagine its residents finding the wherewithal to move ahead and flourish in the way they testified to.

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KEN HOWARD/METROPOLITAN OPERA

54

Renée Fleming as Countess Madeleine and Russell Braun as Olivier in Richard Strauss’ “Capriccio.”

n opera

Women in Words and Music Renée Fleming and Natalie Dessay featured in Met late season outings

BY ELI JACOBSON

R

ichard Strauss’ “Capriccio,” in its first revival at the Met, explores the question of what is more important in art –– music or poetry?

Always something of a connoisseur’s opera, the 1942 work only premiered at the Met in 1998, with Kiri Te Kanawa as Countess Madeleine, who must choose between the love of a poet and of a composer.

Renée Fleming has triumphed in the role in Europe, and her singing of the Final Scene (in a Galliano gown) was the highlight of the special gala opening night of the Met’s 2008-2009 season.

The revival was spurred by the opportunity to showcase the beloved soprano in one of her best roles.

“Capriccio” is a delicate work that requires a festival approach in casting and production. The revival provided great pleasure, despite some major miscalculations in interpretation and design.

Political correctness banished the Galliano sheath gown worn in 2008. Robert Perdziola, the new costume and décor designer, provided two garish dresses for Fleming. By the time the HD was broadcast, the ugly turquoise tea gown with the fur trim had been replaced. Sarah Connolly, as the glamorous actress Clairon, sported a frightful fashion faux pas in a mustard, orange, and brown print, and Mauro Pagano’s elegant pastel-paneled 18th-century salon was cluttered with garish new settees and sofas.

Thankfully, the musical performance showed a higher level of elegance and style. Andrew Davis returned to lead a subtle performance revealing an autum-

nal melancholy reminiscent of another late Strauss work, “The Four Last Songs.” As the composer Flamand, the dashing lyric tenor Joseph Kaiser sang with a silvery tone and incisive delivery of text that reminded me of early recordings of Julius Patzak. He seemed to have rather an unfair advantage in looks and charm over Russell Braun’s nebbishy portrayal of the firebrand intellectual poet Olivier.

Connolly brought an amusing touch of British comedienne Penelope Keith’s flustered hauteur to Clairon. Peter Rose’s rich mellow bass gave the impresario La Roche, a practical man of the arts, humanity and authority. Debutant Danish baritone Morten Frank Larsen looked handsome but sounded rather dry as the Count, Madeleine’s lothario brother.

Barry Banks and Olga Makarina managed to sound wonderful while looking properly silly as the Italian singers.

As the center of this tempest in a teacup, Fleming looked and sounded lovely.

The role was written for a soprano slightly past her prime and gives the singer a long time to warm up before the big sing in the last quarter hour. Fleming provided reams of gleaming silvery tone in the final monologue.

Fleming’s interpretation is problematic for me –– and it isn’t just her mushily enunciated German diction. In her interview with Gay City News’ David Noh, Fleming described Madeleine as a woman having the time of her life playing the two suitors against each other.

Whereas Te Kanawa had a certain Mona Lisa mystery, simultaneously alluring and aristocratically aloof, Fleming just

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to Royal Danish without jeopardizing its classics.

“The Lesson,” with set and costumes

by Bernard Dayde, takes place in a basement studio with a fancifully high ceiling, a large garret window, mirrored walls, barre, and spinet. It is a narrative about a psychotic ballet teacher who kills his private student in a momentary loss of control and, with the aid of his pianist/ assistant, hides her body as the next innocent student is arriving for her lesson.

It’s a sardonic work, but the escalating violence of the Ballet Master (Thomas Lund) against the Student (Ida Praetorius –– listed as apprentice, but acquitting herself excellently in the role) might offend feminists in 2011, as he relentlessly forces her to dance on pointe, strikes her, and finally strangles her.

Company principal Gudrun Bojesen plays the comically crotchety pianist, and seems to be actually playing the piano during parts of Georges Delerue’s score.

In his “Lost on Slow” (2008), Finnish choreographer Jorma Elo unleashes his brand of eccentric neoclassicism on selections from Vivaldi violin concertos. Elo peppers classical vocabulary with hip-hop-inflected body ripples that allow the dancers to articulate with their spines, which they hold ramrod straight in the Bournonville works.

Three men and three women slither

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seemed a shallowly flirtatious society woman. Constantly smiling and playing with her blonde hair while sipping martinis, giggling, and lolling on divans, her final unrevealed choice seemed a narcissistic woman’s caprice rather than the epiphany of an artistic muse.

O

n May 15, Natalie Dessay headlined a Metropolitan Opera Orchestra concert led by Fabio Luisi, the new principal guest conductor deputized on short notice for the man he is touted to replace, the increasingly fragile James Levine.

The concert started with a brilliant performance of Berg’s “Lulu Suite,” with chillingly refined playing by the orchestra and Dessay’s antiheroine suggesting a neurasthenic twin sister to her famous Zerbinetta. For an artist famous for her dramatic interpretations, Dessay surprisingly chose three wordless vocalises –– by Ravel, Glière (lyrical andante only), and Rachmaninoff –– which she has recorded for EMI. These freed her to lavish her attention on pure tone and its coloration and to reveal a better-knit legato and lusher tonal quality than she has displayed in opera recently.

Two opera arias followed. The lyrical “Lakmé” aria was pallid, but the “Manon” Cours de la Reine arias were delivered

22 jun – 5 jul 2011 through Thomas Bek Jensen’s moody lighting, its beams made visible in stage mist. An extended duet at the heart of the ballet features charmingly graceful Lena-Maria Gruber and compact jumping jack Alban Lendorf. One impressive lift has him balancing on one leg while she perches with her legs hooked backwards around his waist.

The company’s signature work is Act III of Bournonville’s “Napoli” –– a parade of solos and specialty dances with revision by Sorella Englund and Hübbe, set to music by Edvard Helsted, H.S. Paulli, and H.C. Lumbye. Children watch from an upstage arched bridge (set and costumes by Maja Ravn) and join the onstage crowd in syncopated clapping, as the virtuosity escalates.

Perhaps due to second-cast jitters, one of the women in her solo managed to throw kisses at the audience without a trace of a smile, and a few other dancers looked more dutiful than joyful in the festivities.

In the understated Danish style, tricks grow more intricate, not bigger. The numbers of tiny steps per note and the foot beats per second in midair increase.

Principal dancers Susanne Grinder and Ulrik Birkkjaer dance with precision and aplomb as the gracious leading couple.

Having two world-class companies, American Ballet Theater and NYCB, right in our own back yard spoils us New Yorkers, but see for yourself whether the Danes can hold their own.

with bold insouciance and command.

Dessay has said in interviews that Manon is a role she wishes to add to her Met repertoire; if this was an audition, it was a successful one.

As an encore, “Il faut partir” from “La Fille du Régiment” again displayed arching legato line and lyrical refinement.

With a short blonde pageboy cut and stunning black sheath accented with pink feathers, Dessay was the image of a diva in full command.

Luisi also had things to prove, and his sweeping virtuosic rendition of Richard Strauss’ “Don Juan” symphony, a lastminute replacement to the program, showed that his command over the Met Orchestra rivals that of its long-time music director. From the softest piano to thundering climaxes, the orchestra played as if possessed.

The relationship between the sound and the word is essential to the art of opera and classical song. The greatest singers have been able to match tone to text in a way that the result is greater than the sum of the parts. Without words, Dessay’s vocalises spoke to the heart, and without voices, Luisi’s orchestra sang. Richard Strauss in the Final Scene of “Capriccio” tells us that for him, art reaches its pinnacle not in music or poetry alone, but from the combination of the two exalted through the medium of the human voice.

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THE CINEMA GUILD

22 jun – 5 jul 2011

Cristi Puiu as Viorel, a seething, tightly compressed ball of rage, is scarier when he doesn’t have a gun in his hand.

n film

Painfully Slow Deaths Cristi Puiu’s Roumanian New Wave drama has too few payoffs

BY STEVE ERICKSON

R

ecently, there’s been a debate in the pages of the New York Times about the merits of “slow” cinema.

Dan Kois wrote about his inability to enjoy the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and like-minded work, writing them off as “cultural vegetables.” Two of the paper’s film critics, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, chimed in to defend art cinema.

Salon critic Andrew O’Hehir went even further, positing that boredom can sometimes be positive. The discussion then spread to the blogosphere.

At this point, it seems to have burned itself out, but “Aurora” is the perfect spark to reignite it. The third Romanian New Wave film to open in New York so far this year, it’s a three-hour study of a man who murders four people. It seems

AURORA

Directed by Cristi Puiu The Cinema Guild In Romanian with English subtitles Opens Jun. 29 IFC Center, ifccenter.com 323 Sixth Ave. at W. Third St.

Hood.” Later, he waits for someone to arrive behind a group of abandoned trailers. At the factory where he works, he picks up two firing pins for a shotgun.

He goes home and attaches them to the gun. He heads to a parking garage and kills two people. Not until the film’s final few minutes does the audience learn who they are or why he murdered them.

Puiu’s previous film, “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,” was almost universally praised in the US, although it didn’t draw much of an audience. While it shared a tendency toward austerity and a long

Puiu’s direction remains impressive, but it eventually becomes stiff and restrictive. to have been made with the laudable intention of avoiding glamorizing violence and the people who perpetrate it, but the result looks like a parody of a European art film.

In a Bucharest apartment, Viorel (director Cristi Puiu) and a woman discuss the fairy tale “Little Red Riding

running time with “Aurora,” it displayed a dark sense of humor, which is missing here. Its wit would be welcome in this context. The earlier film also mixed gritty neo-realism with mythic overtones, as its title character spent an evening hurtling

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JOAN MARCUS

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The cast of “Priscilla Queen of the Desert, the Musical.”

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that will take you back to your misspent youth make this a complete pleasure. It’s definitely eye and ear candy, but you’re virtually guaranteed a good time, if this is your thing.

Palace Theatre, 1554 Broadway at 49th St. Spotty orchestra seating, some premium seats at $200, and very good availability in the mezzanine and balcony (ticketmaster.com or 877-250-2929).

SISTER ACT You really can’t go wrong with nuns cutting loose, and this bright, engaging and energetic show really is classic Broadway.

Patina Miller as Deloris Van Cartier is just fabulous, and it’s always a treat to see Victoria Clark. If you know the movie, you know this show, but it’s dazzling and dear.

Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway at 53rd St. Side orchestra and rear mezzanine available as well as good availability of premium seats at $176.50 (telecharge. com, or 212-239-6200).

JERUSALEM Not for the faint of intellect, the reason to see this fascinating but dense play is the central performance of Mark Rylance as Rooster, a man who has chosen to live off the grid in England. When a housing project threatens his Falstaffian fiefdom, chaos breaks loose. The play asks a lot of questions — about utopia, the spirit, kinship, country, and the possibility of redemption — but be prepared to come up with and debate your own answers.

Music Box Theater, 239 W. 45th St. Tickets available at all prices (telecharge. com, or 212-239-6200).

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Brian Bedford stars as Lady Bracknell.

Pretty much everything else about this production is fairly conventional, but it’s well acted and overflowing with charm.

Some of the best costumes you’ll see this year as well.

American Airlines Theater, 227 W. 42nd St. Decent side orchestra and good mezzanine seats available (roundabouttheatre. org or 212-719-1300).

HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING Daniel Radcliffe is the reason to see this. The “Harry Potter” star makes a solid

debut as a song and dance man. The show is a little dated, but the exuberance of the company overcomes some of the flaws, trying very hard make this “Mad Men: The Musical.”

Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 W. 45th St. Side orchestra seats and rear mezzanine available (telecharge.com, or 212-2396200).

THE SHAGGS: PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD This is one of the most exciting, original Off-Broadway musicals in many years. The story of the failed rock group and their stage dad is a bleak version of “Gypsy,” set in the 1960s. Still, exciting performances, incredible, complex music, and dynamite performances make this worth a look as something off the beaten track.

Playwright’s Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St. Good availability, with rush seats for people under 30 one hour before curtain (ticketcentral.com or 212-279-4200).

BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO Robin Williams headlines this play that is alternately lyrical, dreamlike, and violently real. Williams is superb, but the play is a little uneven. Still, it’s hard not to be drawn into this world — and, in doing so, confront the physical and spiritual torments of war.

Richard Rodgers Theatre 226 W. 46th St. Good seats available in all price ranges (ticketmaster.com or 866-448-7849).

And finally, for something a little different. If you happen to be in town on a Thursday evening and are looking for something post-dinner, post-theater, or, perhaps, pre-clubbing, any Broadway fan should make his or her way to Feinstein’s at the Regency. Scott Siegel has produced a wonderful show called “11 O’CLOCK NUMBERS AT 11 O’CLOCK.” Starring Scott Coulter, Carole J. Bufford, and Christina Bianco, with outstanding musical direction by John Fischer, this is a wonderful cabaret show of those lungbusting, emotional tours de force that come near the end of a big Broadway show. Presented with charm, bravado, and talent, this hour-long show is a must-destination for any Broadway lover. $26 cover, plus two-drink minimum (540 Park Ave. at 61st St., feinsteinsattheregency.com or 212-229-4095).

www.gaycitynews.com hot! festival, from p.50

how it’s going to be received. Plus it has twinks in it!”

More comedy comes on July 8 with “Dyke-Opalypse: Laughing at the End of the World.” Everyone’s favorite butch security guard, Molly Equality Dykeman (aka Andrea Alton), joins other funny gals for an evening of poetic wisdom, song, and dance. Alton’s solo show, “Molly ‘Equality’ Dykeman’s Comedy Extravaganza,” is presented on July 15.

“Me and my magical mullet have created a HOT! show full of sexy showgirls, funny gay dudes, and some of the filthiest poetry ever uttered on a public stage,” said Alton. “I’ll also be premiering an erotic burlesque dance that will make both the men and ladies ooze with desire. I won’t be surprised if an orgy breaks out in the audience.

The best part is, some gal is gonna get real lucky that night, because I’ll be in the mood for some lady love after the show.”

On July 29 –30, Marga Gomez stages her ninth solo comedy show, “Not Getting Any Younger.” Calling it a “Coming of Middle Age story,” Gomez said, “It begins during Marga’s childhood in Washington Heights at a time when adults could be mean to children and everyone believed children should be seen and not heard. Marga persevered through those soul-crushing early years with the false hope that when she became older she could be mean to children. She wakes up in 2011, when children call the shots, adults shoot botox, and Marga gets called Ma’am by hipsters, driving her to commit murder at a Forever 21 department store.”

Dixon HOT! Festival will also stage burlesque performances. On July 2, “Burlesque with Essence Revealed and Friends” will feature storytelling through dance and special guest Miss SoCo Brown of Brown Girls Burlesque.

On July 28, “World Famous *BOB*’s Top Shelf Variety Hour” that is “dazzling” and “queertastic,” with the glamour of Vegas.

For those inspired by these performances, on July 9 –10, Victoria Libertore will hold the Butch Burlesque Workshop, which she calls, “a striptease done artfully. So, that means some clothing coming of f… but it doesn’t have to be everything. In burlesque, anything goes — you can explore your femme side, butch it out, or anything in between.”

Libertore asks that participants arrive with a song and a concept, and through the weekend, she will help you develop your piece.

“I’ll share with you some of my tools for being open and comfortable on stage, holding the audience’s attention and channeling various archetypes for one hell of a powerful performance,” she said.

THE COMMUNITY PHARMACY THAT CARES !!!!

THETHE COMMUNITY THAT CARES COMMUNITY PHARMACY PHARMACY THAT CARES !!!! !!!!

THE COMMUNITY PHARMACY THAT CARES !!!!

Stacie Joy

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Victoria Libertore will perform her Butch Burlesque Workshop.

On August 5, participants can test their new skills by performing in “Butch Burlesque: An Evening of Swagger,” co-curated by Lea Robinson and presented by L Boogie Productions. Although performing is not required for workshop participants, Libertore said, “Butch women, FTM, gender queer — all are welcome that feel like you hold some kind of butch energy in your heart.”

Of course, the festival would not be complete without dance. On July 1, choreographer John J. Zullo stages “How Brief Eternity,” a meditation on the persistence of hatred as exemplified by the targeted killing of gay men in Iraq since the start of the war there in 2003.

On July 19, dance, video, and text come together in “Girl Adventure (Excerpt).” The creator, Dixon Place artist-in-residence Nina Morrison, explained, “A woman searches for a book and encounters a gang of angry sea goddesses in a library,” in a story with references to “‘The Ramayana,’ a Sofia Coppola film, the travel channel, and how people dance at weddings.”

Though HOT! has far too many offerings to lay out here, the annual Dixon festival promises to serve up something for just about any taste.

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queer film, from p.47

very good.

“The films that shaped my identity the most were really more campy and queer in spirit than in explicit content.

As a child, I pretty much wore our family Blockbuster card out renting ‘The Wiz’ and John Waters’ ‘Hairspray.’

These movies, while slightly embar rassing cinematically, have characters that are full of joy, color, music, and love — qualities that I continually aspire to possess.”

Some New Yorkers working in the film industry offered a more jaded perspective.

Sandon Berg.

Comedian Eddie Sarfaty, who wrote the short film “Second Guessing Grandma,” which starred Kathleen Chalfant, argued, “Gay films don’t particularly inspire me — good films do.

That’s not to say that there aren’t gay writers, directors, and actors out there doing good work — there certainly are.

It’s just that there are a lot of horrible gay films that get a lot of buzz, and that too often I find myself embar rassed to even be in the audience.

“Living in New York, where being gay

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toward his mortality through Romania’s decaying apartments, ambulances, and emergency rooms, a journey that suggests a trip through the underworld.

“Aurora” lacks any such larger-than-life dimension.

Puiu’s direction remains impressive, but it eventually becomes stiff and restrictive. In almost every interior, the shot is split by a doorway. Viorel usually stands toward the back of the frame.

People are often heard more than they’re seen. That said, the soundtrack is rela-

22 jun – 5 jul 2011 is easy, I don’t feel particularly drawn to characters or stories designed to reaffirm my day-to-day reality. I find myself touched most deeply by characters who remind me that my world isn’t the norm — characters who are terrified, but who bravely, though imper fectly, meet the fears and challenges that their worlds put in their way.

Jack and Ennis in ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ Andrew Beckett in ‘Philadelphia,’ Brandon Teena in ‘Boy’s Don’t Cry,’ and Jamie and Ste in ‘Beautiful Thing’ are all characters that frequently make appearances in my head, reminding me of how grateful I am to have a supportive family and to live in a city where my encounters with hatred are few and far between.”

Edward Miller, associate professor and coordinator of the master’s program in Cinema and Media Studies at the College of Staten Island/ CUNY, has different, more sexually charged cinematic tastes. He cited his admiration for “the early 1970s porn auteurs Peter Berlin and Wakefield Poole, both of whom are profiled in documentaries

by Jim Tushinski. Poole and Berlin absorbed influences from experimental film and cinéma vérité, and created new ways of celebrating gay sexuality through film. Berlin demonstrated the erotics of cruising and self-exhibition, while Poole depicted how samesex couplings enter into the realm of the magical through the realization of fantasy. The embedded argument in

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Todd Verow.

Heart Should Be,” he brashly stated, “The whole idea of positive role models makes me want to vomit. I have always rooted for bad boys and girls in movies. I would much rather watch gay characters kill or be killed than see them accepted into the military, get married, have kids, and live happily ever after. No thanks! I’d much rather watch ‘Cruising’ about a closeted gay cop, Al Pacino, and a gay killer who

port the lavish lifestyle he has created for the love of his life, fellow criminal Ewan MacGregor. This movie turns the whole naïve idea of positive role models on its head and fucks it joyfully up the ass.”

“Living in New York, where being gay is easy, I find myself touched most deeply by characters who remind me that my world isn’t the norm.” both men’s visions is that gay identity is both natural and cultural; desire is co-produced by the lustful environments in which gay men live, such as Fire Island and San Francisco.”

Then there is the prolific gay filmmaker Todd Verow. The writer and director of the sexually explicit films “Deleted Scenes” and “XX: Where Your

shoots blanks. Maybe I am just really twisted, but the scene where the killer picks up the teacher and kills him always gets me off.

“Recently, I was pleasantly sur prised by ‘I Love You Philip Morris.’

Jim Carrey underplays — well, for Jim Carrey it is underplaying — a gay con man who will do anything to sup-

tively quiet. Piano music plays over the opening and closing credits, but apart from that, almost no music is used during the film.

Films about murderers often lend some charisma to them; in many cases, simply having them played by movie stars is enough to do so. Anthony Hopkins’ per for mance in “The Silence of the Lambs” is the most glaring example.

Puiu plays the killer in “Aurora” himself. While he’s not a professional actor –– this is his first film role –– he’s pretty convincing. Rather than giving his char-

acter any appealing qualities, he plays Viorel as a seething, tightly compressed ball of rage. The killer is scarier when he doesn’t have a gun in his hand, as in a tense scene where he harasses a trio of female clerks in a clothing store.

“Aurora” owes a debt to several European films that spend most of their time showing their protagonists doing mundane chores and then culminate in violence –– Marco Ferreri’s “Dillinger Is Dead” and Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman.”

Michael Haneke also seems like a visible influence, although Puiu’s charac-

Eddie Sarfaty.

ters aren’t over-privileged bourgeoisie and the director lacks Haneke’s tendency to moralize about the media, late capitalism, or his audience. In fact, Puiu seems reluctant to come to conclusions about anything.

When we finally learn why Viorel committed his murders, the film seems to be rubbing our face even deeper into the banality of evil. There’s no satisfaction or catharsis to the film’s finale, just relief that it’s over. Puiu mistakes mere austerity for meditation, and a deliberate lack of pleasure for any productive challenge of his audience.

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n in the noh

Music Man Theater world laughs and tears, Cliff on Joan, big rocks

BY DAVID NOH

ANDREWGERLE.COM

O

ut gay composer Andrew Gerle recently won his fourth Richard Rodgers Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his musical “Gloryana.”

I was impressed by the song selections from the show on his website (andrewgerle.com), and was eager to meet him. When I congratulated him for –– unlike so many current opera and musical composers –– not being afraid of melody, he said, “But that’s what music does best!

You can’t just set conversation to music –– that’s my biggest pet peeve. Also lyricists who don’t focus their ideas into a few syllables so that the music can do things.

“Both my parents were classical performing artists, so I grew up in that whole world of concerts and recordings and I was a classical pianist. I didn’t rebel against it. I really liked it. I start-

Out gay composer Andrew Gerle was recently honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his musical “Gloryana.”

ed at three. There were pianos in the house, so it was like reading –– if the parents read, so do the kids. That’s what people do –– you go home and practice. And I was just OCD enough to enjoy working on something until it was perfect.

“I grew up mostly in Baltimore, with its strong musical community, but for a couple of years I went to Tallahassee because my mom was teaching there. It was a big change and I’m glad I went, as I now have a fondness for the South, which comes through in ‘Gloryana.’ I like things that are messy, and nothing’s more messy than the South –– so much that’s beautiful to celebrate and also its stain of racial history.”

“Gloryana” is actually two stories, Gerle explained: “One focuses on a racial shooting based loosely on a Tennessee incident when a couple of black teens got into it with a white guy wearing a Confederate flag on

his jacket. They fought and a gun went off, killing the white guy. The female president of the Daughters of Dixie comes to the aid of the dead man’s girlfriend, which transports us into the world of Southern heritage and ante-bellum balls, and the mother of one of the black kids is an amateur cabaret singer who writes a song about it and turns into a sort of Nina Simone figure, against her will.

“Then there is this teenager who reads all the wrong kinds of Confederate stuff on the Internet and rushes to the aid of the young woman. Interwoven through this are Civil War letters from a Confederate soldier to a Union nurse, something that I discovered often happened in my research, which ties everything together with the modern day. Soldiers would get injured and cared for up North and then sent home, but of course the

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relationships happened and continued.

We’re all Americans, and that’s what’s so fascinating about the Civil War.” Gerle calls the work messy and big “and I was so happy to win the Rodgers Award, which gives me this great developmental opportunity, a grant to do a seven-performance reading, and workshop it.”

Gerle, an impressive workaholic, also

22 jun – 5 jul 2011 Lyrics and Lyricists Comden and Green evening, “Carried Away,” at the 92nd Street Y (May 21). Josh Grisetti, Mary Testa, among others, were just fine, but when Uggams entered, in a smashing lilac chiffon gown that looked as if it had been designed by Travis Banton, the entire temperature of the room changed. With those fabulously mellifluous, miraculously undiminished pipes of hers, she sang “My Own Morning,” from her Broadway show, “Hallelujah, Baby”

“I like things that are messy, and nothing’s more messy than the South.”

I

ndeed, one should never miss an opportunity to see that living treasure Uggams, who recently stole the

(originally written by Arthur Laurents for Lena Horne) and, again, killed.

Adolph Green’s widow, Phyllis Newman, was the evening’s host, full of reminiscences, dotted with a few inaccuracies –– at the time of her first date with Green (whom she met c. 1956), she said she was reading “Valley of the Dolls” (which wasn’t published until 1966), and that he compared her to Ann-Margret (who wouldn’t become a star until the 1960s).

Oh well. It’s true now.

T

his year’s 67th annual Theatre World Awards (June 7, August Wilson Theatre), given to actors making their Broadway or Off- debuts, was the liveliest and most moving one ever, thanks to some real emotion in the acceptance speeches, as well as serious raunch, delivered by the likes of Chris Rock, speaking for the ensemble of “The Motherf*cker with the Hat,” and, surprisingly, the redoubtable Zoe Akins, who presented it.

Akins scored the biggest laugh when,

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Remarks by Tony Sheldon and Ellen Barkin (page 64) were among the highlights of the 67th annual Theatre World Awards.

JIM BALDASSARE

wrote a musical based on the film “Meet John Doe,” had an opera, “The Beach,” which was given a New York City Opera VOX reading, and published a book, “The Enraged Accompanist’s Guide to the Perfect Audition” (published by Hal Leonard). A really useful, witty guide to any aspiring performer, it addresses everything from proper attire to song selection to essential minutiae like avoiding encasing one’s music in plastic sheets as they’re a pain in the slippery ass for the piano man.

Gerle had the opportunity to work with two of his idols, John Kander and Leslie Uggams, for a revival of “The Rink” at the Cape Playhouse: “John came in, so enthusiastic, saying, ‘This is my favorite score!,’ and Leslie was so professional and just killed in that role. She was absolutely stunning, never wanted to stop working –– ‘Let’s do it again!’ That work ethic, but so effortless, and she never marked.”

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in her stentorian tones, she boomed, “When they told me I was to give this award to the motherfucker with the hat, I thought, ‘Oh, dear! They have gotten crude! What’s his name?’”

The actress who has really emerged as Broadway’s Queen this season for her role in “The Normal Heart,” Ellen Barkin, delivered tears, especially as her award was presented by ex-husband, Gabriel Byrne.

He remembered a producer arranging for him to meet her, and him mistakenly expecting to see Ellen Burstyn. Barkin’s beautiful green eyes impressed him, and when he complimented her on them, she said, with typical forthrightness, “They’re contact lenses!”

Tony Sheldon, who gives “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” a modicum of taste, gave perhaps the classiest speech in the history of these awards when he confessed that he’s collected every volume of Theatre World annuals. Its late founder, John Willis, must have been smiling when Sheldon extolled the joy they brought to a stage-struck Aussie kid and how they were also a curse. As they’re his favorite bedtime reading, Sheldon’s lover will often be startled out of a good night’s sleep by him suddenly exclaiming, “I didn’t know Lilias White played a field mouse in the original ‘Wiz!’”

A

t the after-party, no one seemed to recognize Oscar winner Cliff Robertson, but I had a lovely chat with him in which he told me that he’d received his Theatre World Award in 1970 for “Orpheus Descending”: “I still feel very proud of it. I played with Maureen Stapleton, one of my favorite actresses who I miss so much. One of a kind, if she met you, in five minutes she’d tell you what she thought about you and didn’t give a damn, so free, direct, open and honest, brilliant. I got cast by our great director, Harold Clurman, so thrilling, with his enthusiasm for theater like a young kid, so open to ideas. Tennessee Williams was a terrific man, so easy to work with. We lost a great writer too soon.”

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nals –– yes, I was a flyer. I live in this place in Watermill, Long Island, I built 20 years ago –– me and the cat. He’s imperious, but he’s patient, waiting for me to grow up.

Cats really don’t acknowledge you as having any brains. You know they’re looking at you thinking, ‘What a pinhead,’ so I have no delusions of grandeur.”

in the noh, from p.63

perfect host, from p.42

possible. Warwick promises John he will be “captivated” at the dinner party, and audiences who go with the film’s flow will be spellbound, too. Other viewers, less willing to play along, might find themselves enduring an uneasy midsection in the thriller, one that includes a dumb bit with a nosy neighbor. The satisfying third act then spins the narrative in a completely different direction.

While it would be —well –– criminal to spoil what occurs, Warwick apparently walks a fine line between sanity and madness. When John’s injured foot drips blood on hardwood floors, Warwick is more concerned about the stain than

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JIM BALDASSARE

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Ellen Barkin.

n these pinched economic times, if you really want to feel poor yet visually dazzled, check out “Set in Style: the Jewelry of Van Cleef & Arpels” at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, through July (2 E. 91st St.; cooperhewitt.org).

It’s the largest exhibit of this legendary bijouterie’s fabulous wares, and you’ll be struck dumb by the opulence and craftsmanship.

There’s a fascinating celebrity wall where you can see the diamond skating rink Garbo bought for herself (of course).

Dietrich’s ruby and diamond cuff, Maria Callas’ gems juxtaposed alongside Jackie O’s (which, courtesy of that rascal Onassis, are so much more impressive), and my favorite, the secret tiny diamond watch that adventuress/ gem collector extraordinaire Paulette Goddard must have needed to surreptitiously consult between trysts.

The hideous multi-colored gem set Richard Burton bought for Liz is also on display, with the purple stones matching those eyes that fashion stylist Freddie Leiba nonetheless assured me were “blue, don’t be ridiculous!”

Leiba also recalled being at a Donatella

I had to ask him about “Autumn Leaves,” his May-December romancer with Joan Crawford: “My first movie.

She was quite wonderful in her own way, very talented, but I never had the feeling she thought she was as talented as she was. She was fiercely loyal if she liked you; if she didn’t, look out! Maureen was the same way.

“Joan approved me for the part. I was already stage trained and she respected that, had great admiration for stage actors, and felt that she didn’t have that experience. But she didn’t give herself enough credit –– she had a presence when she came onscreen, you could feel it. She’d had hardscrabble beginnings, and I think that had a lot to do with her personality. It really surprised me that she had such a hidden inferiority complex because of her early years. Oh yeah, that typewriter scene [when he throws it down on her professional typist character’s hand] –– everybody always remembers that scene because of the violence.”

Pressed to name his favorite role, Robertson said, “I’ve never done anything that I really approved of. Never walked away feeling I’d done a good job. I guess I’m the least dissatisfied with ‘Charly,’ for which I won the [1968 Oscar] award.

It was a joy to write my own words for “J.W. Coop” [1971]. He was a simple cowboy who had modesty, directness,

and courage –– qualities once valued in this country –– but did not have the kind of character that society promotes, and he couldn’t handle the change in society.

“When you ask if I’m still acting, I dislike the adverb still. But I’m still breathing and working. I also write, got my start as newspaperman and fell into theater. I write a column, “Cliffhangar,” for Airport Jour-

Versace dinner party when Liz admired Versace’s canary diamond ring. Her hostess graciously let her wear it, and Taylor kept it on through dinner and left with it. Now that’s noblesse oblige!

his guest’s pain. He is also very particular about good manners — abhorring lateness and liars, in particular. Social commentary work well within the film’s alternating tones of dark humor and darker thrills, making it a smart morality tale about bad behavior.

“The Perfect Host” may seem stagy as John and Warwick battle for control within the house, but Tomnay introduces subplots to open up the drama and draw out the escalating tension. One sequence has Detective Morton (Nathaniel Parker) trying to solve the bank robbery. Was the teller, Simone (Megahn Perry), in on the crime with John, as he suspects and a flashback suggests? Or is there more to that story?

When John talks about chess, explaining that while he can only control his own moves in the game, he can influence his opponent’s behavior as well if he plays things right, Tomnay tells us a good deal about his approach to filmmaking. Manipulating the thinking and emotions of his audience by introducing elements that distract it and distort the facts, Tomany is trying to outwit his viewers. It’s a canny approach that mostly pays off, though there may be one twist too many.

But that is a minor complaint about a film that has so many positive qualities.

First, there is Pierce’s outstanding performances. Audiences will marvel at the way the actor expresses himself through

keen body language and, especially, at his success in altering his voice range throughout part of the film to create a “new” character. Pierce is effortlessly able to go from repressed one minute to manic the next, and has an excellent foil in Crawford, an engaging actor not unlike the young Ray Liotta who is able to play sexy, frightening, and vulnerable, sometimes within the same scene.

The two actors feed off each other well, investing viewers in their characters and what happens to them.

“The Perfect Host” ends as cleverly as it begins, with the characters never quite knowing if they are in control or being played. Then again, it is usually hard to see checkmate coming.

Broadway’s Queen this season for her role in “The Normal Heart” was Ellen Barkin.

Contact David Noh at Inthenoh@aol. com and check out his new blog at http:// nohway.wordpress.com/.

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army of one, from p.38

response to the oppressive homophobic culture in Alabama where I grew up and to my own homophobia. I was a miserable alcoholic. I tried to stop drinking when I was 23, beginning with a very bloody suicide attempt. It took eight years fighting to get sober, a pretty rough road. I was ready to reclaim those life dreams I once thought were impossible.

DK: Your dream was to be a Marine?

JK: First I went back to college, got my degree in theater, and moved to California. After an audition one day, I thought, I’m really sorry I never did the Marine thing. I love this country very much, I identify with Marine Corps culture. It just so happened I lived across the street from a recruiting station. So I walked in there, a gay man in his 30s living in LA. I knew where the gym was — I was a lot more fit than most of the 19-year old kids who grew up on PlayStation. They had a pull-up bar, and I fired off a few to prove I wasn’t over the hill.

Next thing you know, I’m at boot camp. It’s the first time in my life that I felt completely on purpose. My depression lifted. I loved being a Marine from the get-go.

The play actually begins when I got the call from my mom asking if I knew what was going on in New York City. I have a lot of friends there. I tried calling to no avail, with that busy signal we all got.

DK: Were you at boot camp during the 9/11 attacks?

JK: I was in LA. I had gone into the reserves. Before 9/11, I didn’t know much about the complexities of Middle East politics. I studied up on the Taliban.

I wanted to figure out who these people were and why they hated us so much.

Soon I got in my dress blues and took a personal pilgrimage to Ground Zero. I was looking for a bathroom and ended up in the basement of a church with a sea of construction workers who’d been cleaning up the wreckage of the Trade Center. Some former Marines came over and pumped my hand, asked me what I was doing there. I said I wanted to see Ground Zero from that little public platform, and they said, “Hell no you’re not.

We’ll take you on a tour.”

They took me to Fire Station 10 across the street. I may start crying when I talk about this, but when I saw the lockers of the men who perished that day, I was devastated. I understood the deep bonds forged from living in such a close environment, risking your life for each other.

They let me up on the roof. As I looked down into this gaping pit, I was filled with grief, yet I felt so glad I was a Marine.

I couldn’t help thinking back to when I was this weak, effeminate, dispossessed, abused kid. I thought, now I’m a big guy, 6-foot-5, 230 pounds. Somebody’s got to stand up for defenseless people, and, goddamnit, it’s gonna be me. I started

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22 jun – 5 jul 2011 preparing for deployment, because it became clear we were soon going to Iraq.

DK: Did you believe George Bush when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?

JK: I’m a pretty smart guy. I thought it was a peculiar connection between Iraq and 9/11. But I knew Iraq was no friend of ours, and that there was a growing desire to destroy us and our allies.

I believed when Colin Powell said it.

I never had much faith in Bush, I just watched him for entertainment value.

But Powell, he charged up the military ladder as a man of color, and I had a lot of respect for him.

Sure, I knew the US has a habit of supporting tyrants when they’re playing nice. But it ultimately comes back to bite us. Remember during the Cold War, Ronald Regan said the Taliban was akin to the American Founding Fathers?

He actually gave Saddam Hussein gold spurs. But I knew [Saddam] was a sonof-a-bitch. He grew so powerful, ostensibly because of aid from the US. My belief was that we would go in there, kick their ass, say, “Here, Iraqi people, here’s your country, have an election, and enjoy democracy.” We didn’t do that. Instead, we dismantled the government, the infrastructure, and the military. You don’t do that unless you plan to stay. It was no liberation, it was an occupation.

DK: What was it like serving under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?

JK: I figured I’d play along, keep my private business to myself. Boy, was I naïve. They shouldn’t call it Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, they should call it “Lie.” These guys told me deepest darkest secrets they’d never tell their wives. For me to look them in the eye and give them some manufactured lie would be an insult to their willingness to die for me.

I was just reading an email from a fellow marine, a straight guy. He wrote, “Wherever you keep me is heaven,” meaning, “in my heart.” We both know that if he calls me at 3 a.m., I’ll be there for him. It makes me so disgusted to hear people for political reasons perpetuate the stupid idea that they’re all faghaters in the military. Sure, there are some. There are racists in there, too.

All my buddies were straight. I didn’t lie to any of them.

DK: Are you saying you never lied about your sexuality?

JK: No, not once they became my friend. The rule I used was, once they came out to me as heterosexual, I came out to them. So if this guy goes, “I was dating this chick and she blah blah blah, what about you?,” I talked about dudes.

They could have had me thrown out of the Marine Corps. Once we got to Iraq, we were really tight. When my buddies would get into the shit,

encountering atrocities in combat, they would seek me out to talk. At one point, the battalion chaplain came to me and said, “So all the guys are coming to you, you might put me out of a job.”

DK: So being out wasn’t a liability?

JK: It was a necessity. I don’t want to come off as some gay supremacist, but we should get a fucking medal for living to adulthood. It really is a kind of battle — we learn to walk the minefield of our culture and choose our confederates.

We’re actually more prepared than the average straight dude.

DK: When did you decide to call it quits?

JK: When we were deployed in Babylon loading out heavy rubble, I opened up my abdominal wall and a little piece of my innards was sticking through. So they flew me back home to have hernia surgery.

I went back to being a demobilized reservist and got depressed again.

Bush is insisting that marriage is between a man and a woman. Why am I gonna follow this man? His foreign and domestic policies are dangerous to this country and counter to my beliefs.

DK: What made you come out so spectacularly on CNN? JK: One of my buddies worked there and said, “Hey, why don’t you tell your story to five million people?” So I went on. It gave me a chance to come out of the closet and voice my concerns about our idiotic Iraq policy.

I was angry, because corporate greed had stolen our good intentions and screwed it up for the whole country.

They completely underestimated the cost, human and otherwise. Not to discount the lives of the 3,000 people who died on 9/11, but tens of thousands of innocent people have perished in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are going to spend three trillion dollars on the war. Just think of the economic hardship our country has been through. Think we could’ve used three trillion dollars? Yeah, we could have.

DK: Did your buddies see you as a traitor for abandoning them?

JK: Never. I called them up and asked their advice. I was afraid they’d think I was afraid to fight and die beside them. I told them my plan, and they said, “Dude, you’d be a lot safer in Iraq. Whatever you do, we got your back.”

Later, when I got married, my marine buddies came in their dress blues and did the arch of swords. There’s this tradition where the last guy pops the bride on the ass with his sword. I was wondering if they would do it. And sure enough, the last guy popped Adam on the ass and said, “Welcome aboard.”

These soldiers were holding up swords for the man of my dreams to walk

under. It was a glorious day.

D K : So how did the play came about?

JK: My friends said, “If you’re going to survive this hell without drinking, you need to put pen to paper and get all this shit out.” So I started writing, and before long the guys would ask me to read from my journals. It was like a monologue, the first incarnation of “The Eyes of Babylon.”

After I left the service, when I was at Crunch Gym in West Hollywood, I saw this smokin’ hot guy and I chatted him up. He grew up in Tel Aviv and had military experience. We had a lot in common, so I read to him from my journals.

Turns out he was a theater director living in Manhattan. His name is Yuval Hadadi. He offered to direct my play.

DK: What was it like staging the piece for the first time?

JK: We put it up in this little theater on the off-nights. Sometimes veterans would see it. Even Lily Tomlin came in and stuck around to talk to me afterwards. When the LA T imes finally reviewed it, they compared me to Allen Ginsberg. It was extremely humbling — and it got the fucking house full.

But when we tried to bring it to New York, we couldn’t get the support. I guess they were looking for a cash cow.

DK: So you took the play on the road?

JK: I decided we needed to go to the American heartland. We took it to Kentucky — in cafés and community centers and colleges. One night, 300 rightwing Christians surrounded the theater protesting, praying, and speaking in tongues — it was scary. I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic, and I felt that by doing the play, I was fulfilling my oath.

The local hairdresser was there, no joke. By seeing my play, he risked losing his business, scaring off all those women getting their hair done up for Sunday church services. He talked about his own homosexuality, which I’m sure he never does, and said, “I guess being gay is no worse than any other sin.” And I replied, “Listen brother, you are perfect the way you are.”

DK: Aren’t you preaching to the choir by coming to New York?

JK: Sometimes the choir needs to be preached to. It becomes stagnant and needs to be inspired. If somebody says, “That was the best play I have seen,” and doesn’t change anything about their life, then I will have failed. I hope people identify their special qualities and learn to celebrate them. I was a timid 12-year old, sensitive and creative and attracted to males of the species. I thought those were the worst things about me, but I was wrong.

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thing I’ve seen mentioned in travel articles by other writers, but to me the place seemed set to blow. Sure, I noted the renovated architecture and glamorous nightlife other Western writers fixated on, but I also witnessed a growing religious movement and escalating political tensions in this ostensibly secular country.

Iraqis –– gay and straight –– love Syria because it reminded them of Iraq under Saddam. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a murderous dictator, but it was easy to see how without him –– as without Saddam in Iraq –– there could be a civil war. That fate seems upon Syria now anyway.

Gay City News readers know the deadly dangers that Saddam’s ouster unleashed on Iraqi gays –– by giving fuel to the religious insurgency. Syria, where gay Iraqis came for refuge, could head down that same road, even if gays are part of the revolution.

A few months after I left Syria, a wave of repression began. My friend was taken in for questioning. His gay blog had strayed into the political realm and was silenced. Things could have been worse for him, but clearly he’d been monitored.

From reliable reports, arrests of gays in large numbers might have begun in the spring of 2010, focused on a park

22 jun – 5 jul 2011 infamous for both gay cruising and straight young trysts, as well as on private gay parties held on the outskirts of Damascus. I reported on this from out of the country, at times using second-hand information from Lebanon that was often difficult to confirm with 100 percent certainty. Shortly after this, a gay friend of mine had to be smuggled out of Syria into a neighboring country for safety.

Looking back, I am glad my friend was able to escape.

mented on Facebook, “I think that Amina is the girl who were interviewed on the show and people almost found out about her sexuality, so she denied it and she said that it’s not her!”

Another, in Jordan, said, “I’ve followed her for a while. Someone created this long before and put any old name that would mislead. I think that person did it for the most obvious reasons of not being outed, ousted, penalized, or even kidnapped. Everyone in oppressed coun-

The imaginary Amina is both an example of this and a distraction from the real plight of real Aminas throughout Syria.

In the midst of the revolution, I have limited contact with my friend in Damascus. I know, for now at least, he’s safe, but I don’t email him. He has also told me never to call him from a US phone, an instant mark of a dissident. How he survives, I don’t know. Thousands like him have been arrested. Many are dead.

We must concentrate on these people, real people with problems in Syria.

Phony activists lead us to take our eye off the ball.

But it’s not just those of us in the West who were duped –– Middle Eastern gay friends were, too. One, in Egypt, com-

tries do[es] that, so no conspiracy needs to be created. The sad thing is, this girl has been taken... whether by kidnapping or whatever, and is actually under her real name which no one knows. She could be any one of the women that were arrested.”

In Syria, subterfuge is all about survival. The imaginary Amina is both an example of this and a distraction from the real plight of real Aminas throughout Syria.

Two salient points make for an appropriate conclusion about the Amina ruse.

The first has to do with the difficulty

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we as Westerners –– despite our immense fascination with the Arab Spring –– have in achieving a true appreciation for what the people in the Middle East are facing.

A lesbian blogger was someone the world wanted to rally behind, especially given the improbability of having ever found her.

The other takeaway is the distraction this scam created, something even MacMaster now acknowledges. In this age of the Internet, we all risk developing attention deficit disorder. After falling prey to MacMaster, will many now choose to ignore the plight of Syrians and others trapped in the Middle East awaiting torture?

For the sake of my own friends –– gay and straight –– hiding from the authorities in the midst of revolution, I hope the answer is no.

Michael Luongo, a freelance journalist and photographer living in New York, is the editor of Routledge’s “Gay Travels in the Muslim World,” the only gay American book ever translated into Arabic.

He was the author, in Gay City News, of “Our Man in Baghdad” –– an article honored with the 2007 Reporting Award for Newspapers Under 100,000 circulation from the New York City chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists –– and of a four-part series in 2010, “A Return to Baghdad: Gay Life and Gay Death.”

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La Plaza Congreso Pensador de Rodin is one of the best examples of Buenos Aires European feel.

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M

onths after our reluctant departure from Buenos Aires, its jacaranda-scented breezes and seductive mix of music and laughter continue to unfold in my dreams.

Most often I’m reminded of my first sight of the Argentine capital’s unique urban sprawl through our plane’s window — a puzzle as varied and diverse as its cultural identity. I remember towering skyscrapers along the Rio de la Plata waterfront, casting slender shadows on turn-of-the-last-century belle époque mansions lining boulevards cutting through the city, their gray-white edges softened by rosewood trees spiraling upward in a burst of green.

Los Barrios

My happy memories always include our visit to San Telmo — one of Buenos Aires’ 48 barrios, or neighborhoods — on a white-hot January Sunday afternoon, where the beauty of this city reached a crescendo at Plaza Dorrego. There, a crowd had gathered, lured by the provocative strains of a violin, cello, and accordion that filled the air with unyielding sensuality. I’d heard tango before, but I had never felt it. Beholding two tango dancers, male, entwined, enticing one another, mesmerizing the crowd, the dance became visceral. And with this scene, we fell forever captive to the city.

Buenos Aires has no distinguishing

monument, like Paris’ dominating, magical Eiffel Tower. Instead, the boulevards 9 de Julio and Corrientes intersect at the city’s heart, ornamented by the comparatively modest Obelisco — a 220-foot-high commemoration of the city’s first founding in 1536. The balance of Buenos Aires is a mosaic of small, comprehensible pieces –– neighborhoods with their own colors, shades, identities, and offerings.

First time visitors, like my boyfriend Arturo and I, often express surprise that a place so European could exist in South America. Spanish is spoken, but with a distinctly Italian lilt. The city’s architecture — much of it French neoclassical — and the lush parks evoke Europe’s urban centers. There’s a joke told, selfmockingly, by locals: “Argentines are Italians who speak Spanish, live like the French and think they are British or perhaps American. “ This hybrid spin on everything from cuisine to temperament adds a continental gloss to a vacation — sitting in an outdoor café, sipping a bottle of Malbec, watching pigeons on the crumbling sidewalks amidst the gracefully fading elegance of the enormous avenues.

Beyond Obelisco, there are popular sights — Evita’s Casa Rosada, the adjacent revolutionary Plaza de Mayo, and the Teatro Colon, shining anew for its centennial.

Yet the overriding joy of Buenos Aires

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El Puente de la Mujer, designed by Santiago Calatrava and reminiscent of London’s Canary Wharf, is located in BA’s most modern district, Puerto Madera.

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comes from allowing time for spontaneous moments, rather than being tied to a fixed schedule. Lose yourself in accidental encounters, from conversation in the Botanical Gardens to sleuthing through hidden shops.

Common to all neighborhoods is a vibrancy that cuts across age groups and special interests — making the laughter of young people who overflow trendy boutique shops, restaurants, and sidewalk cafés charming instead of alienating. Everywhere, hands are gesticulating in wild conversation. People stroll casually through leafy, beautifully manicured parks, and music fills the air.

The Scent of a City

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gay city news

Above all, sensuality permeates this frenetic and seductive port city, where locals are called Porteños. A lust for life, including one’s fellow man, is nothing to be ashamed of. That’s the message Bue-

nos Aires offers the tourist. It is palpable ––and the locals know it’s good for business.

“I can tell you guys are from the states,” said the friendly cab driver taking us to dinner at El Querandi on our first night in Buenos Aires.

“How?” I asked. “Because we are going to a tango show?”

“Si! Si! yes, that... but more so we here have gay marriage, which brings down so many of you American gays!”

Arturo laughed, replying in Spanish, “¿Lo que quieres decir es que te das cuenta que somos gay?”

Our cabbie’s ready conclusion we were gay was part of a more important quality we noticed among Porteños: Argentina wants to be seen as a socially liberal, progressive society where everyone should feel safe and welcome.

“Gay marriage has, for Argentina, been like a big welcome sign to gay trav-

Arturo in front of Nuestra Señora de Belén, the San Telmo church emblematic of the neighborhood’s traditional Spanish architecture.

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San Telmo’s famous flea market features some of the most finely crafted Mate Yerba cups, with silver straws.

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elers from around the world,” explained New York’s leading expert in gay travel to Buenos Aires, Carlos Melia, a native Porteño who was Mr. Gay Argentina and subsequently Mr. Gay World 2008. “Even though gay foreigners cannot legally marry in Argentina, they know they are welcome here as they are welcome nowhere else in South America.”

To be sure, Buenos Aires’ pervading sense of welcome is the reason we had chosen that city for our vacation — and have decided it will, we hope, become our annual winter destination.

New Yorker Michael Luongo, a frequent contributor to Gay City News and the author of “Frommer’s Buenos Aires,” was living in Argentina during our trip –– and had also been there last July to witness the historic Casa Rosada signing of the marriage law. Writing for more than a decade on Argentina, he’s noticed the rise in gay tourists.

“Even when I am not there doing gay travel writing, hotels will emphasize their gay-friendliness,” he explained.

Shopping the Markets

We took Melia’s advice that we rely cabs for relatively cost-effective meandering. Public buses, or colectivos, are available to traverse the city, but they can often be crowded. Buenos Aires also sports a limited subway system, though without air-conditioning, making it a summer nightmare. Crime, especially by pickpockets, is not lacking and there are precautions tourists must take, but serious incidents are relatively rare. English is common, and Argentines love to practice.

Every Sunday, Plaza Dorrego and Defensa Street are transformed into an antiques market, drawing huge crowds.

The market has also become a favorite pickup spot for locals looking to flirt with tourists. The next neighborhood over, La Boca, is the old Little Italy on the docks of the Riachuelo River. Its Caminito is the stereotypical but colorful tourist trap, with cheerfully painted conventillo houses. Just don’t stay there at night.

Stores in the city’s main shopping areas — especially around Florida Street and Avenida Santa Fe — are open all day, though in contrast to San Telmo, Sundays are hit or miss. Leather goods are of excellent quality, and prices are relatively inexpensive by international standards.

One chain to check out is Casa Lopez (casalopez.com.ar), with four locations –– two on Plaza San Martin, two on Florida Street, and one at the Sheraton Hotel. Or hit the Murillo leather warehouse district in the Villa Crespo neighborhood, bordering Palermo Viejo.

Downtown also has Pink Point, the gay information center. (pinkpointbuenosaires.com. Lavalle 669, #24; + 54/ 11-4322-1343.) While we New Yorkers lament the loss of gay bookstores, Buenos Aires has one –– Librería Otras Letras in Palermo Hollywood. Pick up a copy of La Historia de la Homosexualidad en la Argentina

by Osvaldo Bazan. (libreriaotrasletras.com. Soler 4796; +54/ 11-48315129.) And don’t miss the breathtaking El Ateneo, considered South America’s largest bookstore, built into a former turn-of-the-last-century theater. (tematika.com. Avenida Santa Fe 1860; +54/11-4813-605.)

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Marta Munjin’s work, on exhibit at the MALBA, was among the most fascinating discoveries we made in Buenos Aires.

Museums

Buenos Aires is full of world-class museums, but one of the most engaging exhibits we’ve ever been to was at the MALBA, or Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires Colección Costantini, the city’s contemporary art museum. Our visit coincided with a retrospective on Marta Minujín, the famed Argentine conceptual artist. The exhibition included a playful mattress house with a TV inside, where everyone lounged in groups. (malba.org.ar. Avenida Figueroa Alcorta 3415; +54/ 11-4808-6500.)

Accommodations

Arturo and I had the good fortune of peripatetic slumbering in a variety of great hotels, affording us an intimate feel for Buenos Aires’ neighborhoods.

Our accommodations were arranged through Melia (CM by Carlos Melia; 347944-0026 in the US and Canada; carlosmelia.com; carlosmeliablog.com). Melia specializes in luxury gay travel and can arrange all aspects of your trip to Buenos Aires –– including a private, three-hour bus tour of the city for around $75 and day trips out of the city –– and to other parts of Argentina. Melia is well-known in the local tourist industry; mentioning his name allowed an upgrade here, a free drink there, and even special twists on meals.

For particularly gay-friendly accommodations, look to San Telmo, once a fashionable residential district and now in a mesmerizing holding pattern of gentrification and decay. There, you’ll find the local branch of the Axel Hotel. (axelhotels.com. Venezuela 649; +54/ 11-4136-9393.)

(See a fuller range of options for where

to stay in the sidebar on page 72.)

Dining

You rarely go wrong in Buenos Aires restaurants, no matter the price. Beef is the national staple, usually cooked on a parrilla, or charcoal grill, as at La Cabaña in Puerto Madero, the restaurant district in the port area off of downtown. (lacabanabuenosaires.com. ar; Alicia Moreau de Justo 380; +54/ 11- 314-3710.) Whimsical El Palacio de la Papa Frita is more of a bargain, where sirloin, called bife de lomo, French fries, salad, mineral water, coffee, dessert, and Argentine wine is $15 to $20 a person. (elpalacio-papafrita.com.ar; Lavalle 735; +54/ 11-4394-7060.)

Want your food gay? Try Inside RestoBar, near the Congreso building, with revealing entertainment and great food.

Ask for pepper. (restaurantinside.com.ar; Bartolomé Mitre 1571; +54/ 11-43725439.)

Excursions: San Antonio – Gaucho Country

As much as we loved Buenos Aires, respites are always welcome, and we found a perfect one in San Antonio de Areco, the definitive Argentine small town on the Pampas, about an hour and a half but worlds away from the capital.

Low colonial buildings line narrow cobblestone streets ending in quiet parks along the Areco river. It’s the center of gaucho (cowboy) traditions, and most of the town’s sights, including an excellent museum, a slew of talented artisans, and some famous estancias (ranches) celebrate the tradition.

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Food and hospitality there were an absolute highlight. At Estancia El Ombu, we were treated like royalty, had a special meal outside under enormous trees, and enjoyed a horseback ride as well as an unforgettable display of gaucho skill.

There’s culture in San Antonio as well. The Centro Cultural y Taller Draghi is a museum and workshop established by one of the nation’s most famous silversmiths, who died in 2008. His hand-made pieces are owned by collectors around the world. Visitors are given a short tour of the workshop that explains the painstaking craftsmanship that went into each piece and are then left to marvel at the museum’s impressive collection, which mixes silver pieces from the 19th and 20th century with some of the workshop’s own products. Wonderfully intricate saddles, spurs, whips, stirrups, knives, and mates line the walls; don’t miss the bridles that took years to make. (paradoresdraghi.com.

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Wandering La Recoleta Cemetery one discovers a million fables of Buenos Aires’ 19th and early 20th century upper class, who felt “You were nobody unless you are buried” there.

ar; Lavalle 387; +54/ 2326-454219.)

Nearby is el Museo Atelier Del Pintor Luis Gasparini, located in the artist’s home. Charismatic and enthusiastic, Gasparini shows and explains his paintings and drawings, focused largely on gaucho and Argentine themes. (Alvear 521; +54/ 02326-453-930) The finest guest estancias in San Antonio de Areco are Estancia la Bamba (labambadeareco. com; +54/ 2326-454-895 or +54/ 11-4519-4996); El Ombu de Areco (estanciaelombu. com; +54/2326-492-080 or +54/11-4737-0436); Estancia la Porteña (laporteniadeareco. com; +54/11-5626-7347); and Estancia El Cencerro (estanciaelcencerro.com.ar; +54/114743-2319).

Overnight visits — meals, tea, and riding included — start at about $95 per person in a bedroom or even a separate apartment, going up to about $300.

Getting There

For New Yorkers, American Airlines (which, happily, does have a 100 percent corporate

rating from the Human Rights Campaign) is the best option for heading to Buenos Aires, with the most daily non-stop flights.

Its customer service also proved a godsend in the sort of winter New York City endured this past year. Preparing to leave at Christmas, we were socked in by near ly two feet of snow; I nearly broke my iPhone repeatedly checking the American app for best guesses on flight delays.

Amidst that mishegas, my phone rang showing a caller with a Texas area code and I turned to Arturo and asked if he could figure out who it might be.

“Mr. Masters, this is American Airlines,” the voice at the other end of the call asked.

“Did you get buried under the snow? We just wanted to reassure you that even though your flight is going to be canceled any minute now, you are on the next flight out.”

Twenty-four hours later, we shoed up at American lounge for our substitute flight and were greeted like family. (aa. com; 800-433-7300.)

Hotels In Buenos Aires There are probably more boutique hotels in Buenos Aires than any other city in the world. Here is a list of the accommodations Arturo and I were lucky enough to sample:

Axel Hotel

For particularly gay-friendly accommodations, look to San Telmo, the site of our tango enchantment. San Telmo was once a fashionable residential district but is now in a mesmerizing holding pattern of simultaneous gentrification and decay.

There, you’ll find the Axel Hotel, the Spanish chain that broke ground here a few years ago, making headlines across the world. Its dynamically modern style

http://www.la-bamba.com.ar

The Vitrum is an unusually beautiful glass, steel, and concrete boutique hotel that offers a very welcoming quiet after our three-day snow-snafued scramble to escape New York. Everything about the hotel underscores tranquility and calm, even though it is centrally located dead center Palermo Hollywood, Buenos Aires’ hippest young neighborhood.

On entering our room through the hotel’s glassenclosed garden, the 15-foot ceiling lent a soaring vertical dimension, while at the opposite end a wall of glass, revealing a lush private teak patio, gave it depth.

A favorite feature of the hotel, aside from the location, is the top-floor deck offering an outstanding party space, spa, massage rooms, and gym. The restaurant in the lobby is also one of the neighborhood’s most romantic dining options. (www.vitrumhotel.com. Gorriti 5641; +54/114776-5030.)

http://www.la-bamba.com.ar

Vitrum Hotel

Views of the Polo Grounds from within one of the luxury apartments at Estancia La Bamba De Areco.

–– complete with a glass-bottom rooftop pool at the top of a towering atrium –– is striking, even if at odds with the Old World feel of the neighborhood. (www.axelhotels.com; Venezuela 649; +54/ 11-4136-9393)

CE Design.

Carlos Melia told us that every time he visits Buenos Aires, he stays at CE Design Hotel, so naturally we had to try it out.

CE Design features outstanding minimalist design

without going too far. Our room was gleaming, all stainless steel, glass, and concrete with white accents, yet quite comfortable and well appointed.

The-floor-to-ceiling windows created a sense of space and a studio-like New York sensibility.

The hotel is located in Barrio Norte, a centrally located neighborhood very much like Union Square in Manhattan that has everything going for it. It was an easy walk to Recoleta, Palermo, and the main downtown destinations. The neighborhood felt safe even on foot at 4 a.m. With the subway nearby, you

can easily access any part of the city.

A beautiful park across the street, Palacio Pizzurno, includes a dog park where we spent a memorable morning sipping coffee and missing our dogs. The area also features great nightclubs and restaurants, including the music lovers’ haven, Notorious, Buenos Aires’ answer to Manhattan’s Blue Note. (designce.com. Marcelo T. Alvear 1695; +54/ 11-5237-3100.)

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Legado Mitico

An inspirational must for any traveler to Buenos Aires, Legado Mitico is a hotel featuring Argentine history.

“I have never stayed in a hotel that I love more,” Arturo said.

It was the absolute perfect choice for New Year’s Eve. Even though most people would choose a crowded nightclub or an expensive restaurant for their celebration, we had a blast walking around the neighborhood, browsing for a nice bottle of champagne, buying some fruits, bread, and cheese, and then just hanging in our room. At midnight, we popped the cork, threw open the balcony doors, and enjoyed the scariest pyrotechnics we’d ever seen –– less than 50 feet away from our window — spontaneous street fireworks being the tradition in Buenos Aires.

It scarcely seemed possible a hotel could be so beautiful, so serene, so well put together. The decor of each room reflects a major figure or event in Argentine history. Our room, El Héroe, celebrates the life of Manuel Belgrano, an economist, military leader, and military figure who designed the national flag. The room was decorated with museum treasures, handwritten documents describing his design intentions for the flag, early renderings of his concepts, his favorite books on economics and politics, and furnishings he owned.

The lobby of the hotel features arts and crafts of the gaucho lifestyle, books and original photographs documenting major historical figures, a lavishly appointed lounge full of artifacts, architectural elements, and modern Argentine furnishings mixed with antiques. The library of the hotel is so well organized and thoughtful that even local academics have taken note. (legadomitico.com. Gurruchaga 1848; +54/ 11-4833-1300.)

Hotel Serena

An elegant, club-like hotel –– think Four Seasons without the price –– and extremely well located, the Serena has understated elegance.

It’s a great location in an area straddling Recoleta and Retiro, very close to high-end shopping like the Patio Bullrich shopping mall that attracts the ladies who lunch crowd.

Neutral tones and refined, polite yet friendly

service was what we found there, appropriate given the hotel’s name. You might well miss out on some of your planned Buenos Aires sights by oversleeping in the comfortable beds covered in high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, or by relaxing in the whirlpool tubs standard in the hotel’s suites. (serenahoteles.com; Libertad 1617; +54/ 11-4813-3226.)

Be Hollywood Hotel

The Be Hollywood Hotel, located in the Palermo Hollywood neighborhood, is a trendy hotel where an international young and beautiful crowd flocks.

While our room was small, with a bathroom to match, Be Hollywood Hotel is in Buenos Aires’ best location for private-label boutique shopping, design galleries, “off-Broadway” theater-going, and dining at any of the neighborhood’s thousands of restaurants and bars. (behollywood.com, Humboldt 1726; +54/ 11-5555-8100.)

Patio De Moreno (On our San Antonio de Areco excursion)

After a day riding horses with the guachos, you want luxury! We got it at Patio De Moreno.

The hotel is a postage stamp-sized structure with enormous rooms and astoundingly alluring spa-like bath suites. It felt a little mysterious, like a David Lynch movie where the style was high above what is required for the location. Extreme sophistication in an isolated town fascinated us.

One step outside our room was a garden in full bloom, surrounding a fire pit and gazebo next to one of the most inviting pools I have ever seen. It was there that Arturo and I saw the stars of the Southern Hemisphere, including the Southern Cross, for the first time.

The location is a little off the city center, next to the Gaucho Museum. Dining choices require a wonderful night walk through small town Argentina, where girls walk hand-in-hand, ice cream shops are full of children, the low murmur of chatter spills onto the sidewalks of postcard-like restaurants, and traffic yields to roaming dogs. (patiodemoreno.com. Corner of San Martin and Moreno, San Antonio de Areco; +54/2326-45-5197.)

–– Troy Masters

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n history

Patching Only Some of History’s Gaps Vicki Eaklor’s “Queer America” falls short of Howard Zinn’s iconic standard

BY DOUG IRELAND

T

he US Department of Education’s latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), released last week, offers more depressing results demonstrating our schools’ continued record of turning out students who are historically illiterate to a stunning degree.

Only 12 percent of high school seniors had a basic knowledge of US history, and a majority of fourth-graders could not name a significant accomplishment of Abraham Lincoln.

But how many gay Americans know that Lincoln was queer? (See this writer’s September 1, 2010 article, “Forget Mehlman, What About Lincoln?,” a link to which appears in the online version of this review at gaycitynews.com.) When I speak to gay audiences, I am constantly dismayed at the degree to which they are ignorant of our own history. This is a great tragedy, for as William Faulkner once wrote, “You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is.” Since pioneer gay historian Jonathan Ned Katz published his groundbreaking 1976 documentary collection “Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A.” (still in print in a revised Penguin Meridian paper edition), there have been huge achievements in excavating the hidden history of gay people throughout the ages. (Katz’s invaluable historical repository, OutHistory,org, meanwhile, desperately needs more funding and institutional support.)

Some of the most impressive historiography has been produced by gay community historians operating outside the academy, like Katz and the late Allan Bérubé, who unearthed the untold stories of the gay “greatest generation” in uniform during World War II (see this writer’s May 26, 2011 article on Bérubé, “He Learned from the Master,” a link to which also appears online).

Sad to say, despite some sterling work by gay university-based historians, much of what comes out of gay studies programs these days is altogether too precious, artificial, and written in an academic jargon indigestible to most LGBT people. Reclaiming our own history is still not getting enough attention from these “queer studies” programs; witness Larry Kramer’s long and ultimately failed fight with Yale’s powers-that-be to have the Larry Kramer Initiative he and

QUEER AMERICA: A People’s GLBT History of the United States

By Vicki L. Eaklor The New Press $17. 95 (paper); 274 pages

his brother endowed at that university become more history-oriented and relevant.

There are huge areas of gay history that remain, for the most part, unexplored.

As American historian Christopher Phelps, who teaches at the UK’s University of Nottingham, wrote not long ago, “As a sexual orientation or identity, homosexuality arose only with the individual wage labor and the separation of household and work characteristic of capitalism. A mystery remains, though, for how did the very same mode of production that created the conditions for this new consciousness also produce intense compulsions for sexual repression? Why, if capitalism gave rise to homosexuality, are the ardent defenders of capitalism, whether McCarthyist or on our contemporary Republican right, so often obsessed with attacking same-sex desire? How does capitalism generate both the conditions for homosexuality and the impulse to suppress it?”

“Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States,” a work

by Alfred University’s Vicki L. Eaklor –– who introduced one of the first gay and lesbian history courses in the country

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in 1991 –– attempts to provide a historical context within which the questions raised by Phelps can be explored.

Inspired by the late, great historian Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” and created as part of a series of similar books under his editorship before his death early last year, “Queer America,” recently published by the New Press, focuses primarily on the panorama of transgressive sexual behaviors that followed the emergence of the identity term “homosexual.” Coined by the Austrian novelist Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1869, in a pamphlet arguing against an anti-sodomy law, the term began to gain widespread traction in the American vocabulary at the turn of the last century.

“The history of people thinking of themselves primarily in terms of homosexual or heterosexual (and later GLBT and/or queer) follows the general patterns of US history and history writing,” Eaklor writes. “After World War II, all GLBT people may or may not have accepted themselves, but those who did adopted a concept of themselves as a ‘minority’ deserving of the same rights as ‘straight’ Americans. The way in which they did so follows important patterns of US historical thought, bringing GLBT Americans into a ‘mainstream’ of the driving forces of our history, not just as victims but as actors in their destinies.

In this way GLBT history is similar to other minority histories, be they of African-Americans women, laborers, or any other self-defined group.”

One of the most compelling arguments in the debate over whether or not samesex desire is a “choice” is its persistence throughout the ages despite extraordi-

THE NEW PRESS

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Tiny Davis, whose World War II-era swing band caught the attention of celebrity musicians such as Louis Armstrong, in time formed her own band and then opened a Chicago nightclub with her lover Ruby Lucas.

them by the hundreds. Here as in Germany, homosexuality extends throughout all classes… Reliable homosexuals have told me names that reach into the highest circles of Boston, New York, and Washington, DC, names which have left me speechless with astonishment. I

“How many homosexuals I’ve come to know!

Boston, this good old Puritan city, has them by the hundreds. Here as in Germany, homosexuality extends throughout all classes…” nary legal, religious, and pseudo-medical repressions. And, despite its cramped limitations as an essentially medical and diagnostic term, the relatively rapid spread of a “homosexual” identity here in the US testifies to an undercurrent of resistance present among homoerotically inclined Americans long before the crystallization of the modern gay movement with the Stonewall rebellion in 1969.

Thus, in 1907, a Boston man wrote to pioneering German homosexual liberationist and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld –– who a decade before had founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee to seek repeal of Germany’s criminalization of same-sex desire –– saying, “How many homosexuals I’ve come to know!

Boston, this good old Puritan city, has

have also noticed that bisexuality must be rather widespread. There is astonishing ignorance among us of the Uranians [homosexuals]. I’ve come to know about their own true nature. This is probably a result of absolute silence and intolerance, which have never advanced real morality at any time or place. But with the growth of population and the increase of intellectuals, the time is coming when America will finally be forced to confront the riddle of homosexuality.”

Such prescient optimism, six decades before Stonewall, is telling.

Eaklor insists, rightly so, that “gender cannot be fully separated from race and class,” writing, “Even after the crisis of

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the Civil War was resolved in favor of the Union, the republic faced the upheaval of Reconstruction and even more rapid industrialization. Masculine qualities were essential, it seemed, to fulfilling the duties of citizen and capitalist, while those feminine were their opposite. For those who believed this, effeminate men and masculine women were both threats in their own ways, undermining in one case and usurping in the other the ‘normal’ arrangements. This may help explain the eventual hostility against both groups, which only intensified in the 20th century once sexuality was defined by gender conformity.”

Among the vignettes of queer Americans in Eaklor’s book –– one new to me –– is her portrait of Ernestine “Tiny” Davis, a jazz trumpetist known as “the female Louis Armstrong.” As the star of the all-female International Sweethearts of Rhythm, formed in 1937 and “one of over forty all-women jazz/ swing bands,” Davis toured Europe during World War II entertaining the troops.

“Armstrong was among the band’s and Tiny’s fans (Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald were others) and reportedly offered Davis up to ten times her $150 weekly salary to join his band,” Eaklor writes. “Asked later why she didn’t go, she responded, grinning, ‘Well, I loved them gals too much!’”

THE NEW PRESS/ COURTESY THOMAS H. WIRTH

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Harlem Renaissance writer and artist Bruce Nugent created this drawing for a proposed production of “Gilgamesh” that would have emphasized the homoerotic elements in the title character’s relationship with Enkidu.

When the Sweethearts split up in 1949, Davis formed her own band, Tiny Davis and Her Hell Divers, and met musician Ruby Lucas (aka Renee Phelan), with whom she later opened a nightclub, Tiny and Ruby’s Gay Spot, which they ran on Chicago’s South Side through the 1950s. When Davis died in 1994, the two women had been partners for well over forty years.

Davis is unfortunately less remembered today than a raft of famous blues singers who were lesbians, including

Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, and Gladys Bentley.

But one wishes there were more portraits like the one of Davis in Eaklor’s book, and that more of their voices were heard.

Eaklor is not a felicitous writer — her style is by turns wooden and academic, she often refers to the work of other gay historians without detailing their findings adequately, and her organization of material is somewhat disjointed. Unfortunately, her book has none of the sweep and power which made Zinn’s “People’s History” a global bestseller and the author a celebrity.

While the second, post-Stonewall half of “Queer America” is a serviceable history of the modern gay rights movement, there are some rather extraordinary gaps, oversimplified elisions, and omissions in the first half of the book.

For example, although Eaklor mentions in passing how the homosexual liberationist ideas of the likes of Hirschfeld and Edward Carpenter first made their voyage across the Atlantic to America, she utterly fails to mention their principal, indeed sole, migration route –– through the American anarchist movement, which for decades maintained a strong and vibrant discourse that unfailingly defended the right to same-sex love.

This important story of the anarchists pro-queer agitation at a time when no

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other political movement or notable public figure in the US dealt with the issue of same-sex eroticism and love has been brilliantly told by Terence Kissack in his meticulously researched 2008 book, “Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States, 18951917” (see this August 28, 2008 review of it, “Anarchism and Gays,” a link to which appears online). Kissack’s book does not even make Eaklor’s extensive bibliography.

The great African-American lesbian poet and essayist Audre Lorde once wrote, “Somewhere on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a ‘mythical norm,’ which each one of us knows ‘that is not me.’ In America this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, Christian, and financially secure. It is within this mythical norm that the trappings of power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practicing.”

While Eaklor’s book helps puncture holes in that “mythical norm,” there is still a crying need for a volume from a more talented and inclusive pen that synthesizes all the most recent developments of gay historiography in this fifth decade after Stonewall, one that lets the survivors of that history speak for themselves.

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Jayden Love tells Tracy Morgan her story.

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ers in New York had no chance to ask him whether those tears were about the stories he heard or the career the “30 Rock” star may have ruined.

The meeting was arranged by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD) in conjunction with Carl Siciliano of the Ali Forney Center for homeless LGBT youth, who had invited Morgan to meet his clients.

“I told him that thousands of par ents reject their kids,” Siciliano said, “and that people who promote a climate where kids are thrown out contribute to the problem.”

Siciliano added, “Archbishop Dolan is more responsible for creating a climate where people think their children are sinful and evil. It’s a lot bigger than Tracy Morgan, and I don’t see many people accepting responsibility for it.”

Neither Siciliano nor any of the other participants in the meeting got an answer from Morgan about where his anti-gay tirade came from.

“The fact that he came and said he was sorry and shed tears was cathartic for me,” Siciliano said.

GLAAD’s Rich Ferraro said that the group was able to get action on the Morgan incident by reaching out to Robert Greenblatt, the out gay chair of NBC, who was responsible for shows like “The L Word” and “Queer as Folk” at Showtime.

“He wanted to make sure that T racy sent a positive message and he wanted NBC to send a message,” Ferraro explained. “He had Tina Fey [producer and star of “30 Rock”] send a statement. Tracy’s apology was not enough.”

“Tracy’s comments reflect negatively on both ‘30 Rock’ and NBC –– two very

all-inclusive and diverse organizations –– and we have made it clear to him that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated,” the NBC chair said in a statement issued the day after the first published reports on the incident.

Fey, in her statement, also released that day, said, “The violent imagery of Tracy’s rant was disturbing to me at a time when homophobic hate crimes continue to be a life-threatening issue for the GLBT community. It also doesn’t line up with the Tracy Mor gan I know, who is not a hateful man and is generally much too sleepy and self-centered to ever hurt another person. I hope for his sake that Tracy’s apology will be accepted as sincere by his gay and lesbian co-workers at ‘30 Rock’, without whom Tracy would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on, scene partners to act with, or a printed-out paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket.”

Ferraro said that Morgan “said he has a lot of gay friends and said that if his son were gay he would love him more.” The actor and comedian also “came out for marriage equality,” the GLAAD spokesman said.

Ali Forney clients Jayden Love, 20, and Raciel Castillo, 19, shared their stories of rejection and homelessness with Morgan.

“I grew up Jehovah’s Witness,” said Love, who explained her family didn’t believe him when he came out.

“I got thrown out because I’m gay,” she continued, ending up sleeping on the grounds of Six Flags in New Jersey, where he worked.

Castillo of Newark told Morgan how his father from Cuba “freaked out and told me I needed to get fixed.” After

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being told he was a “disgrace,” he left home. While the two have since reconciled, Castillo, who wants to be a fashion designer, lives at an Ali Forney residence.

Morgan “took full responsibility” for what he did, said Castillo, who thought the way the Tennessee audience was reportedly “cheering him on” was “crazy.”

“I want to see progress,” Castillo said. “He gave us a lot of encouraging words.”

A week before arriving in New York, Morgan issued a statement saying, “I want to apologize to my fans and the gay & lesbian community for my choice of words at my recent standup act in Nashville. I’m not a hateful person and don’t condone any kind of violence against others. While I am an equal opportunity jokester, and my friends know what is in my heart, even

22 jun – 5 jul 2011 to discuss it. During that appearance, he said he accepted Morgan’s apology “if he shows my community and his fans that he truly is sorry for those remarks and takes content like that from his show.”

Morgan’s crude routine was at odds with a public service announcement against bullying he taped last November.

“Picking on someone because they are different doesn’t make you a tough guy, it makes you a bully,” he said in it. “If you know someone that’s being teased, talk to them.”

Some celebs have come to Morgan’s defense.

Shortly after news of the incident broke, Chris Rock, in a Twitter post, closed ranks with his fellow comedian, saying, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in world where Tracy Mor-

Elke Kennedy pressed Morgan to make his amends visible by wearing a button from her Sean’s Last Wish group, which fights gay teen suicide and anti-gay bullying and violence. in a comedy club this clearly went too far and was not funny in any context.”

Elke Kennedy, whose son Sean was killed by a gay-basher in South Carolina in 2007, pressed Morgan to make his amends visible, by wearing a button from her Sean’s Last Wish group, which fights gay teen suicide and anti-gay bullying and violence.

“I feel like he made a commitment to make a change and to use his position as an actor to be an advocate for the LGBT community,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy is working with the Gay Straight Alliance Network to educate teachers and administrators throughout the South about LGBT youth issues.

Where does she think Morgan’s outburst came from?

“I can only speculate,” Kennedy responded. “People use other people’s misfortune to get people to laugh without thinking about the impact. If he had thought about it, he wouldn’t have said it.”

She said Morgan told them that his son was backstage in Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium during the June 3 appearance “and let him know he was upset.”

The Morgan routine was exposed

by Kevin Rogers who attended it, was offended, and wrote about it on his Facebook page. He reported that “10 to 15 people walked out,” but he stayed “because I knew if I got up, he won.”

He was most alarmed by the enthusiastic response of many of Morgan’s fans in Nashville.

The incident caused Rogers to come out to his mother before going on CNN

gan can’t say foul inappropriate shit.”

James Franco, speaking to CNN at an AmFAR benefit in New York, said that while he does not “condone at all” Morgan’s routine, “I think he, like a lot of performers before him, has gotten into trouble because of that weird blurry line between performance [and] reality or how people take it because…

Look, I can name 20 movies right now where they make gay jokes where they didn’t get this kind of thing, but because it’s a movie somehow, like, they can do that. But if it’s a nightclub, it’s a different thing. So I can see how he might have gotten tripped up, but I’m sure he wasn’t speaking his true beliefs.”

Joan Rivers told the Daily Beast, “He shouldn’t apologize. Gay fans?

What are they doing seeing him anyhow? Why aren’t they watching me and Kathy Griffin.” Continuing in that glib vein, she added, “He’s lost his gay fan.”

On Facebook, Rogers wrote, “Tracy said he didn’t fucking care it he pissed off some gay fans, because if they can take a fucking dick up their ass, they can take a fucking joke.”

It’s no joke to Elke Kennedy. She lives with the pain that the last words her son Sean heard from Stephen Andrew Moller as he punched him hard enough to break his facial bones and separate his brain from his brain stem was “Faggot!” She has dedicated her life to ending that kind of violence and is waiting to see if Tracy Morgan is sincere about ending it, too.

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Parents With Pride

To schedule your AD in this special section or for more information, please contact Francesco Regini at 646.452.2493 or francescoregini@gaycitynews.com

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MATTHEW MURPHY

MATTHEW MURPHY

22 jun – 5 jul 2011

Beth Leavel opened the show in grand style, and then turned it over to a whole lot of Broadway dancers sacrificing their clothes as well as their time.

n performance

“Bares XXI” Nets $1.1M for Broadway Cares The gayest show in town stays fresh, funny, and outrageous

BY ANDY HUMM

B

roadway dancers sacrificed their clothes and considerable time and talent for the 21st edition of “Broadway Bares” at Roseland on June 19, raising a record $1,103,072 for Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS. What started in 1990 at Splash is still being produced by Broadway director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell and packing thousands of gay people (“and the six heterosexuals in the audience,” as Roger Rees quipped) into Roseland for two spectacular shows of dancing ecdysiasts and stars being funny. This year’s title, “Masterpiece,” reflected its art theme.

Art works from The Last Supper to Washington Crossing the Delaware came to sensual life, with the Father of Our Country getting down and making out with his troops. It also featured a luscious Blue Boy, a saucy Mona Lisa, paint-covered bodies in the mode of Picasso, and a magic African mask that triggers a frantic dance that wore me out just looking at it.

Let’s just say it was a lot more entertaining than “Spider -Man” —

who popped up himself in a Monet number with Robin de Jesus as a frog with a loooong tongue.

Beth Leavel kicked the evening off in style. David Hyde Pierce gamely came out as Michelangelo’s David.

Christopher Sieber and the New York Post’s Michael Riedel traded barbs worthy of Beckett’s Estragon and Vladimir in a skit with Rory O’Malley of “The Book of Mor mon” and Jim Parsons of “The Normal Heart.” Patina Miller of “Sister Act” sang a smashing finale. And Judith Light of “Lombar di,” a veteran AIDS activist, wrapped up the evening.

Producing director Michael Graziano, director Josh Rhodes, associate director Lee Wilkins, and 13 choreographers led 192 dancers into giving their best for the good cause. Hunter Foster wrote the skits. MAC Viva Glam, which has already donated 70 make-up artists, kicked in an extra $200,000 at show’s end toward the record-breaking total.

If all this makes you realize you missed something, you did. For less than half the price of a Broadway show, it’s the gayest show on earth.

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(PHOTOS: DONNA ACETO)

22 jun – 5 jul 2011

n pride We at Gay City News have taken note of the almost undeviating tradition of the LGBT Community Center getting fair weather for its annual Pride Week Garden Party. It was no exception this year. Under a blue sky and with seasonably warm weather, thousands gathered on the Hudson River’s Pier 54 at 14th Street for an evening of entertainment and tastings from some of New York’s most innovative kitchens. Talk show diva Wendy Williams played host, and City Comptroller John Liu and out gay Queens City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, seen here with Center executive director Glennda Testone, were just a few of the elected officials to turn for this traditional opening night of Pride Week.

(PHOTOS: DONNA ACETO)

GARDEN ON THE HUDSON

(PHOTOS: DONNA ACETO)

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DONNA ACETO

DONNA ACETO

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DONNA ACETO

were Edie Windsor, whose lawsuit challenging the estate tax bill she received in the wake of the death of her spouse, Thea Spyer, led to the Obama administration’s decision to abandon its defense of DOMA; and Manhattan Congressman Jerrold Nadler, seen here with Councilmembers Gail Brewer, Mendez, Lew Fidler, Quinn, Van Bramer, Dromm, and Melissa Mark-Viverito.

DONNA ACETO

The Great Hall at Cooper Union played host on June 16 to the City Council’s annual Pride celebration, hosted by its LGBT caucus –– Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilwoman Rosie Mendez of Manhattan and Councilmen Jimmy Van Bramer and Daniel Dromm of Queens (seen together, at right). Rory O’Malley, who stars in “The Book of Mormon,” was the evening’s emcee. Among the celebration’s honorees

DONNA ACETO

GAY PRIDE AT THE GREAT HALL

DAMIAN FURTCH, a 26-year-old man beaten after a group of men followed him outside of a West Village MacDonald’s, which the victim had left once his assailants began making anti-gay comments, was among the speakers at the June 18 LGBT Pride Rally, the first major event of Pride Week in Manhattan.

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ron clark

ron clark

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n pride

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION(IST) of West 28th Street where the venerable Eagle Bar resides. The event raised money for the New York City Anti-Violence Project, the LGBT Community Center, and the National Center for Sexual Freedom.

ron clark

The annual Pride event that bills itself as New York Fucking Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Sexiest Street Festival, Folsom Street East, basked under clear blue skies on Sunday, June 19. Thousands flocked to the leather and fetish event held on the block

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n perspective/ COALITIONS FOR CHANGE

LGBT New Yorkers, Immigrants: One Struggle, One Vision

BY DANIEL DROMM

A

s chair of the City Council’s Committee on Immigration, I work with immigrants in my district and throughout the city to address the challenges they face every day.

Many of the immigrants I encounter are pushed from their home countries by circumstances far beyond their control. In the United States, immigrants are highly vulnerable as targets of hate crimes and because they are denied a fully recognized voice in the public discourse.

As an openly gay elected official and lifelong LGBT activist, I believe the stories of immigrants’ lives should resonate with LGBT individuals and should encourage us all to support immigrant rights in the city and the nation.

As part of my work with the immigrant community, I have pressed the mayor to fully implement the city’s stated commitment to providing language access for all city services. I have introduced a bill to allow permanent residents to vote in local elections. I have also organized a workshop to assist victims of immigration scams and have been fighting to maintain funding for legal services and English and civics classes.

There is much left on my immigration agenda –– establishing a day laborer center, addressing police relations, and removing immigration agents from Rikers Island, among other goals. On the

City Councilman Daniel Dromm of Queens.

nation are coming out and joining the fight for justice and recognition. They have written editorials, spoken on the steps of City Hall, and organized their neighbors, all to address a grievous injustice that is a part of their daily lives.

These young people, who had no choice in whether they were brought here, are succeeding despite the odds.

The Development, Relief and Educa-

Immigrants are highly vulnerable as targets of hate crimes and because they are denied a fully recognized voice. national level, I have proudly stood with our advocates –– even getting arrested –– to bring attention to our country’s broken system and the need for comprehensive reform.

My own commitment to immigrant rights stems from my experiences as an LGBT activist. I started the Queens Pride celebration 19 years ago because I wanted to help our community define itself after years of having others define us. Just as the LGBT community did in Queens and throughout the nation, immigrants and allies need to come out and show their communities that they are an indispensible part of the fabric of this city. I was reminded of this when a former student recently came out to me –– as both gay and undocumented.

Undocumented youth across the

tion for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was meant for just such individuals, and would have cleared a path to citizenship for youth who are furthering their education or serving in the military. But, as immigration reform languishes in Congress, incendiary rhetoric against immigrants increases.

Despite the promises of leaders in Washington, the pressing needs of immigrant families are continually downgraded. When faced with two issues demanding action last session, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the passage of the DREAM Act, Congress unfortunately could not muster the will to address both.

The failure to get both jobs done has

c

dromm, continued on p.94

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n legal

Wyoming Grants Lesbian Divorce State’s high court insists ruling is narrow, but implications potentially far-reaching

BY ARTHUR S. LEONARD

T

aking an eminently pragmatic position, the Wyoming Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that a same-sex couple married out of state can seek a divorce in the courts there.

Reversing Niobrara County District Judge Keith G. Kautz’s dismissal of the case, the high court, on June 6, found that allowing access to Wyoming courts for divorces did not conflict with the state’s policy against allowing same-sex marriages.

According to Justice Michael Golden’s opinion for the court, Paula and Victoria Christiansen, Wyoming residents, were legally married in Canada in 2008, and Paula filed a divorce action in Niobrara County in February 2010. Kautz dismissed the petition, finding that in order to get a divorce, a couple must first be married, and that Wyoming law does not authorize same-sex marriages.

The Supreme Court first noted that Wyoming does not have a statute specifically forbidding recognition of same-sex marriages contracted elsewhere. Indeed, state law provides that “all marriage contracts which are valid by the laws of the country in which they are contracted are valid in this state,” a provision heatedly debated by the Wyoming Legislature as it recently considered, but failed to act on, a bill to make a carve-out for same-sex marriages.

Contrasting the requirement that valid marriages from other jurisdictions be honored with Kautz’s reliance on a different Wyoming law that defines marriage as “a civil contract between a male and a female person,” Golden wrote, “We do not agree that... a conflict exists in the context of a divorce proceeding.”

He found that the marriage definition statute “prevents a same-sex couple from entering into a marital contract in Wyoming” but that the recognition provision “expressly allows for the recognition of a valid Canadian marriage in Wyoming. On their face, the two sections treat different situations and as such do not conflict.”

Even though marriages “contrary to the policy” of Wyoming, such as a polygamous or an incestuous union, have been denied recognition, Golden argued such an exception is “neces-

sarily narrow, lest it swallow the rule.”

Common law marriages, though not authorized in Wyoming, have been recognized –– specifically in the context of a 1979 workers compensation claim –– when involving couples who entered into such unions in states where they were allowed.

“Recognizing a valid foreign samesex marriage for the limited purpose of entertaining a divorce proceeding does not lessen the law or policy in Wyoming against allowing the creation of same-sex marriages,” Golden wrote.

“Accepting that a valid marriage exists plays no role except as a condition precedent to granting a divorce.”

The women, he noted, “are not seeking to live in Wyoming as a married couple” and “are not seeking to enforce any right incident to the status of being married.”

The high court insisted its decision was not “tantamount to state recognition of an ongoing same-sex mar riage.”

The court’s decision, especially its analogy to common law marriages, however, suggests there is a good basis to argue that same-sex mar riages contracted elsewhere should be recognized as valid in Wyoming for purposes beyond divorce. The court, in fact, was being a bit disingenuous in saying the women “are not seeking to enforce any right incident to the status of being married,” since the right to seek a divorce, with the attendant assistance of courts in disentangling both property and child custody matters, is highly valued as just such a “right.”

But in this ruling, the Wyoming court stops short of the kind of step taken, for example, by trial and appellate-level judges in New York, where, despite the lack of same-sex mar riage rights, there is mounting judicial authority that such unions formed in other jurisdictions should be fully recognized as marriages. The attorneys general in Maryland and New Mexico have come to the same conclusion as the courts in New York about recognition of out-of-state marriages.

What remains unclear is whether the approach articulated by the Wyoming Supreme Court is sufficiently narrow to forestall the Legislature from revisiting the question of specifically denying recognition to same-sex marriages from outside the state.

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90/ Editorial n Letter from the editor PUBLISHER & CO-FOUNDER JOHN W. SUTTER

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Anxiety, Great Expectations & Weariness, Too PAUL SCHINDLER

F

or the past ten days, like many gay and lesbian New Yorkers, those of us here at Gay City News have watched the unfolding events in Albany with rapt attention and no small amount of anxiety.

June 13 and 14 were two of the most spellbinding days I have spent as a journalist covering gay politics. After a concerted six-month campaign by leading professional advocates, grassroots activists, and the governor of this state, we arrived at a moment where four of the remaining six State Senate votes we needed to enact marriage equality –– a deficit that had not budged since last November’s elections –– materialized in a single press conference.

The following day we picked up another vote.

We were just one short of our goal.

And we’ve stayed in that place for the eight days that followed. Each morning, we’ve wondered where the 32nd –– and winning –– vote would come from and whether the Republicans who run the Senate’s agenda and bill flow would allow a measure most of their members oppose to see the light of day.

It is clear, as of this writing, that we will not hear about any more Republican supporters of marriage equality until we learn whether the major ity is willing to allow a vote.

James Alesi of Rochester and Roy McDonald of Troy either bucked their party leadership in announcing their support before the conference considered the matter or they were

allowed to go public because their votes alone would not put the issue over the top.

The GOP was unwilling to allow a marriage vote to move for ward until they had extracted as much as they could in their negotiations with the Assembly Democrats and Gover nor Andrew Cuomo on other important issues, such as a property tax cap and renewal of the New York City rent stabilization law.

In and of itself, that strategy is hard to criticize. Politics is about negotiation, horse-trading, and compromise.

But in their protracted stalling on marriage, they gave credence to a grab-bag of wild fears, some half-truths at best, and other outright misrepresentations about the potential threat marriage equality poses for religious freedom: A clergy member could be sued for refusing to marry a gay or lesbian couple. Parishes and synagogues declining to rent out their halls for gay wedding receptions might lose their taxexempt status. Catholic adoption agencies would have to abandon their mission ––that charge made in spite of the fact that adoption has nothing to do with the state’s marriage law.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has tried to neutralize the more overheated rhetoric by referring to his own Roman Catholic faith, acknowledging that religious freedom is –– of course –– a fundamental Amer-

ican principle, but then arguing that there need not be any conflict between religious freedom and civil rights.

Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, the out gay Manhattan Democrat who is the lead sponsor on the marriage bill, said he is satisfied that Cuomo can steer the religious protections discussion to a satisfactory conclusion for the Republicans without sacrificing any civil rights gay and lesbian New Yorkers currently enjoy.

In fact, he expects any compromise reached to include no language that does not reflect existing New York law; he is confident that the GOP concerns can be assuaged by having religious protections found elsewhere in statute incorporated in clear black and white in the marriage equality law.

If that is true, it suggests that Republicans are inter ested primarily in being able to show their more conservative supporters, including powerful anti-gay religious forces like the Catholic Church, that they fought for them even in defeat.

After all, the Republicans could kill the bill outright simply by refusing to allow a floor vote.

Apparently, the strong polling marriage equality enjoys statewide and the glare of so many TV lights have convinced them that denying us our vote is politically untenable.

Their dithering, it seems to me, is an acknowledgment they know they will lose. Otherwise,

they would have grabbed their victory already.

So, it seems likely that a celebration will be in store for us –– in fact, it might have started already by the time these words are in the hands of readers. That moment of victory will offer us the chance to recognize the contributions of so many who have brought us to this point.

In the meanwhile, I have to reflect on an emotion I’ve experienced separate from anxiety and anticipation. Namely, irritation.

Part of that stems, no doubt, from my great disappointment in coming out with our Gay Pride issue with this battle so close to conclusion, but not quite there.

But the larger measure of my frustration comes from the unpalatable experience of sitting and waiting day in and day out while a nearly opaque political dance unfolds that is, in fact, a referendum on my dignity as a citizen. The fact that my equality –– which according to core American values is God-given or, in more secular terms, mine by right of birth, should be in the hands of elected officials who show such cavalier disregard for basic notions of fair play and equal treatment is a truth I will never be able to accommodate myself to.

As I write these words, I remain confident that our goal is within reach. But at moments on the journey, there are bittersweet reminders of the injustice that has defined far too much of our lives.

deeper trend emerges. So far the pro-Israel forces have attempted three attacks on freedom of speech.

The first was at the Center around Siegebusters, the second was at the UN around Julian Schnabel’s film screening, and finally the third was at CUNY around Tony Kushner’s honorary degree.

In the end, it seems only the Center buckled under to the forces of thought control. Not a good sign. The other two institutions successfully fought off the

pressure.

I can only imagine what’s going to happen around town in September when the long overdue vote on Palestinian statehood comes up at the UN. I just hope there are not symbolic book burnings in Sheridan Square near the George Segal statues.

Come to think of it... don’t those statues commemorate an event that brought about our right to the freedom of assembly?

Alan Hertzberg New York City

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n Letters to the editor

FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY June 14, 2011 To the Editor: Duncan Osborne’s article on the new LGBT Community Center “moratorium” was interesting (“Swift, Stinging Criticism of LGBT Center Moratorium,” Jun. 8-21).

I think when you analyze the whole Israel/ Palestinian issue over the last few months in New York City, an alarming

22 jun - 5 jul 2011 n snide lines

Perspective /91 Another Ring Cycle

BY SUSIE DAY

G

ay men think they know about opera. Hah. They don’t know about lesbian opera, which, like lesbians themselves, has long been invisible. I just happen to have a scenario for a grand opera by and for lesbians, absolutely chock full of tragic splendor. Regardez:

ACT I Naughty and feckless Clarinda, a baby dyke just out of reform school, arrives at the lesbian town of Uterville on the very day the locals are holding their joyous Festival of the Social Change Workshops! Lesbian peasants and nobles alike, in brightly colored overalls and drawstring pants, sing and dance to their simple womyn’s folk songs, while the naughty Clarinda goes around putting itching power on everyone’s dental dams.

Enter: Phallopia, Queen of the Lesbian Activists and Keynote Speaker. Stunned by Phallopia’s beauty and momentarily paralyzed with infatuation, Clarinda

sings the ever-popular aria “La Donna Immobile.”

At last, Clarinda gains an audience with the Queen by pretending that an evil therapist has turned her into a man, and that only the kiss of a Lesbian Pure in Politics can break the curse. Phallopia, who can never resist a cause, kisses the naughty and feckless Clarinda, and the two fall in love.

Suddenly, the lights dim and all the oxygen is sucked out of the theater.

ACT II Scene: U-Haul Rental office, holy site of the happy duo’s Commitment Ceremony. Commitment music fills the hall as a retinue of swans smoking cigars escorts Clarinda, in nymph costume, to the altar. There Phallopia stands, dressed as Leon Trotsky. The lovers plight their troth, singing the majestic and politically aware “Coupletalist Duet.”

“I was once a working-class Capitalist,” recalls Clarinda.

“And I was once an upperclass Communist,” replies Phallopia.

“But now,” both sing, “we are as One: The People’s Republic of Us!” And they take turns piercing each other’s belly buttons.

Comic relief is provided by a chorus of Celibates, who perform the piquant “Dance of the Test-Tube Babies.” Villagers offer the couple an homage of toasters and microwave ovens, as Clarinda asks the musical question, “Is That All We Got?” A golden U-Haul arrives to take the newly committed pair somewherze else.

ACT THE THIRD A year later.

Scene: A humdrum rentstabilized cottage, deep in the forest. The naughty Clarinda feather-dusts the Certificate of Domestic Partnership hanging on the wall while she awaits the arrival of her Activist Queen. In an attempt to spice up their relationship, Clarinda

has donned a Bo Peep costume and sings of how wonder ful it will be when her beloved returns home to act out the part of the sheep.

Enter, finally: Phallopia, exhausted from a hard day on the picket line. “What’s for dinner?” she cries. “How about some nice hot sex!” teases the naughty Clarinda, shaking her bootie fecklessly in the face of her paramour.

“What?” gasps Phallopia.

“Sleep with you while our people are denied the legal right to wed? NEVER!” And she sings the magnificent aria, “Ne Me Touche Pas, I am Fighting the state.”

To drown her out, Clarinda plays love songs real loud on the radio.

All at once, she sees the true Phallopia: “Why, why you’re… codependent,” she gasps, clutching her throat.

“Ha! So are you!” rejoins Phallopia in musically discordant tones. “That is why I fight — to legalize our codependency!”

That night in her dreams, Clarinda is visited by the Twelve Steps, each more hideous than the last. She wakes up and gets a cat.

ACT IV Repeat Act III, but with more cats.

ACT V At last, the state in which Clarinda and Phallopia are living legalizes gay marriage. This is the final blow to the couple’s sex life. In defiance, they hold a government-sanctioned wedding but refuse to admit swans.

The lonely and bereft Clarinda sneaks away from the crowd and sings: “’Tis awful to be lawful; O Phallopia, why canst we not elopia?”

The residents of Uterville are unable to attend the wedding but send toasters instead.

More and more toasters pile up onstage. A fight breaks out in the audience.

CURTAINS

n a dyke abroad

Saving My Pride

BY KELLY JEAN COGSWELL

I

t’s LGBT Pride.

I should get out there, wave the rainbow flag, celebrate. Especially since our New York State legislators are on the verge of legalizing same-sex marriage and the UN Human Rights Council finally declared lesbians and gay men shouldn’t get stoned to death, beaten up, tossed out of our jobs, or hung by the neck until dead.

This is hugely important for queers internationally. Especially for activists like Wamala Dennis, who’s risking his life as the director of Icebreakers, a group fighting AIDS, and defending LGBT rights in Uganda. For the last couple of years, they’ve been fighting off attempts to make homosexuality punishable by death. That anti-gay campaign is headed by David Bahati, a fundamentalist Christian linked to The Family, a group of US evangelicals with deep pockets.

The UN council vote gives all us activists another tool. And I should be thrilled at these advances, including marriage, but every time I think about a bunch of het politicians or priests or anybody else sitting around discussing whether or

as them, as adult, as human as them. Because that’s what this sort of equality blab amounts to.

A bunch of hets trying to decide if we’re worthy of marriage’s privileges and responsibilities. If we’re worthy to walk the earth, or should be buried under it,

It’s totally repulsive having people sitting around trying to decide if I’m as good as them. not queers like me should have rights equal to theirs, I fantasize about stopping at the nearest farm supply store, picking up a couple tons of chemical fertilizer, inserting a fuse, and POW! BLAM! KABOOM! It may be part of the process, but c’mon. It’s totally repulsive having people sitting around trying to decide if I’m as good

and forgotten.

I wouldn’t mind getting a few of those little amenities hets have enjoyed so long, like immigration and inheritance rights that come with same-sex marriage. And I want us all to be safe in the streets and in our homes. But I’ve got news for our hetero friends. We don’t need your vote to join the human

race or be declared worthy of anything at all. So when you’re slapping yourself on the back for your nice progressive vote, don’t count on my applause.

I’m saving that for the real heroes. The LGBT people doing it for themselves, like the song says. Taking to the streets, speaking out. Like Wamala Dennis. And every queer kid brave enough to join the GayStraight Alliance and slap on a triangle. Or put on mascara when it’s supposed to be a baseball cap, or wear a tux instead of some frilly horrible dress.

In France, my newest heroes are Aline Pascale de Raykeer and Stephanie Daumas, who actually did an interview about their civil union (PACS) and hopes for same-sex marriage and let their regional newspaper use not just their names, but their faces as well. You want to know what a lesbian

looks like? Here ya go. They’re beauts.

We forget that it’s not just violence that keeps queers invisible. It can be the weight of culture as well. The habits of silence. And shame. Until recently, French queers kept to their place, sticking to the usual détente of the closet. There was a kind of unspoken agreement that if you were discreet, your sophisticated compatriots wouldn’t bother you much, and you could pretend you were morally equal even if legally you were something they scraped off the bottom of their shoes.

When queers in France sued for civil rights, they did it anonymously, as Jane or John Does.

We never saw their faces. Never heard their names.

Not any more. French queers aspire to more than tolerance.

The slogan for the Pride March

c

saving my pride, continued on p.95

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n Perspective/ Israel and palestine

Queers Should Focus on Arab World and Iran, not Israel

By Benjamin weinthal

T

he LGBT communities of the world are now confronted with a strange fusion of homophobic radical Islamists and extreme left-wing groups.

In recent weeks, the anti-Israeli groups Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA) and Siegebusters have taken shots at the one Middle Eastern country that respects the rights of its LGBT community. As 100,000 people took part in the annual Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv, QAIA stoked hatred of the Jewish state at similar parades in Brooklyn and Queens.

They are slated to march in the jumbo Pride Parade in Manhattan on June 26.

Meanwhile, Siegebusters â&#x20AC;&#x201D; whose membership appears to overlap with QAIAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; are raising funds to sponsor a flotilla to violate Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s legal naval blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

The alliance between Hamas and Siege Busters/ QAIA is unsettling. Hamas cofounder Mahmoud al-Zahar has said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You in the West do not live like human beings. You do not even live like animals.

You accept homosexuality. And now you criticize us?â&#x20AC;?

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event. Citing Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s declaration of independence, she highlighted the governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s responsibility to guarantee the rights of all people. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There are still many teenagers who fear the price of freedom is the love from their parents if they come out to them,â&#x20AC;?

Livni said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;There are parents who are still prejudiced and unwilling to accept their children as they are.â&#x20AC;?

Nitzan Horowitz, an openly gay member of the Meretz party in the Knesset, told participants in the Tel Aviv parade, â&#x20AC;&#x153;We will expand the struggle so that anybody who wants to live his or her life on their own path can do that without fear of being cursed or hit in the street, without fearing being thrown out of their home, and without the fear of being harassed at work.â&#x20AC;?

In a largely overlooked remark to a joint session of the US Congress in late May, even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the lethal homophobia flourishing in Muslim countries. He compared Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;path to libertyâ&#x20AC;? with â&#x20AC;&#x153;the Middle East [that] has long

When QAIA equates Israel with the former Apartheid regime of South Africa, they evince little pratical understanding of the vast distinctions between them.

Both the European Union and the United States have designated Hamas a terrorist organization because it showers Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s southern cities with rockets and calls for the obliteration of the Jewish state. The purpose of the naval blockade is to prevent weapons and rocket smuggling into Gaza.

Meanwhile, homosexuality remains a crime across the Muslim world. In Syria, Bashar al-Assadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s regime imposes a three-year prison sentence for samesex relations. In Libya, where Muammar Qaddafi has ruled for more than 40 blood-soaked years, the punishment is five years in prison. In Yemen, the penalty is death. The Islamic Republic of Iran and Saudi Arabia lead the world in enforcing capital punishment against their LGBT communities. And the list goes on.

What is most ironic about QAIAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s obsession with Israel is that the Jewish state is the only government in the Middle East that openly encourages acceptance of LGBT communities â&#x20AC;&#x201C;â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and even tourism by foreign gays.

Tzipi Livni, Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s former foreign minister and head of its opposition party Kadima, spoke at the Tel Aviv pride

rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different.â&#x20AC;?

In early June, New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s LGBT Community Center denied QAIA permission to hold meetings there, leading to charges it was silencing dissent and free speech. Yet the Center would surely deny individuals and groups the opportunity to rent space when their rhetoric is animated by hatred. It would never welcome, for instance, the crackpot anti-gay Reverend Fred Phelps and his followers, who blanket military funerals and gay events with signs reading â&#x20AC;&#x153;God Hates Fags.â&#x20AC;?

When QAIA equates Israel with the former Apartheid regime of South Africa, they evince little practical understanding of the vast distinctions between them.

Those distinctions are not lost, however, on the Vanguard Leadership Group, made up of students and alumni from historically black colleges and universities in the US. In April, the organization spoke out against the odious likening of the Jewish state to the former Apartheid

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www.gaycitynews.com

22 jun – 5 jul 2011

n Perspective/ Isreal and palestine

We’re Here, We’re Queer— And We Support Palestine!

By laura durkay and brad taylor

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ecent months have seen a spate of frenzied attempts to muzzle members of the queer community from any criticism of Israel.

The CUNY board of trustees outraged many by trying to deny Tony Kushner an honorary degree because he has made statements critical of Israel.

In Toronto, the city’s newly-elected conservative mayor threatened to defund the annual Gay Pride Parade if the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid takes part.

And most recently, Manhattan’s LGBT Community Center announced a blanket ban on renting space to groups organizing around the Israel-Palestine conflict, calling the work “peripheral” to its mission.

In practice, this means excluding two groups — NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, who are organizing Palestine solidarity contingents in this month’s Pride events around the city, and Siegebusters Working Group, of which we are members.

There are compelling reasons why queers of all backgrounds should stand in solidarity with Palestinians. As members of an oppressed minority, we have a vested interest in resisting attacks against any group of people based on their identity. If we expect non-LGBT people to stand up for our rights, we need to be ready to stand up for others’.

Solidarity with oppressed people the world over used to be common sense in the gay rights movement — in the late 1960s, the Gay Liberation Front chose a name that consciously invoked the national liberation struggle against the US military in Vietnam.

The years since 9/11 have seen an alarming rise in scapegoating of Arabs and Muslims. Just like homophobia, Islamophobia relies on demonizing and dehumanizing an entire identity group, creating an “other” that becomes an acceptable target of both institutional discrimination and vigilante violence.

A component of this Islamophobia is the stereotyping of Islam as a uniquely intolerant religion. Israel has played off this misperception, engaging in a campaign of “pinkwashing” to brand itself as a haven of acceptance for LGBT people in a homophobic Middle East, as if this somehow cancels out its oppression of the Palestinians through military occupation, discriminatory laws inside Israel, and denial of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, a right clearly recognized under international law.

Israel’s pinkwashing arguments can

be dismantled easily.

First, Israel is not immune to homophobia. In 2005, a religious extremist stabbed three marchers in Jerusalem’s Gay Pride Parade, and in 2009, a horrific shooting spree at a Tel Aviv LGBT youth center left two dead and 15 wounded. Second, Israeli occupation and apartheid create dangerous conditions for any LGBT people who happen to be Palestinian. And third, even if Israel were a paradise of rainbow Speedos and Olivia cruises, we do not accept our equal rights in trade for someone else’s. Relative tolerance of one group could never justify oppression of another.

Palestinian LGBT people have delivered a very clear message to their brothers and sisters in the United States. Groups like Palestinian Queers for BDS, Aswat, and Al-Qaws (organizing Palestinian queers in Israel, the Occupied Territories, and the diaspora) have called on us to join the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The BDS movement draws on traditions of successful non-violent civil resistance against apartheid in South Africa and segregation here in the United States.

Last month marked the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, when black and white civil rights campaigners united to challenge illegal and unjust segregation through nonviolent direct action. The US Boat to Gaza, the Audacity of Hope, part of the Freedom Flotilla that will bring together activists from all over the world to attempt to break Israel’s punitive and illegal naval blockade of the Gaza Strip at the end of June, continues that tradition.

While traveling halfway around the world to challenge a powerful military in a small boat may seem like a big commitment, it is not an act of charity.

It is both a great honor, and a natural response to people who are suffering and in need of support. The passengers on the US Boat to Gaza are ordinary people who stand in the tradition of political struggle exemplified by the queer liberation movement –– solidarity with the oppressed and a commitment to building a world where people of every identity can live in equality without fear.

Laura Durkay is a member of Siegebusters Working Group and the International Socialist Organization. Brad Taylor is a member of Siegebusters and will be a passenger on the US Boat to Gaza.

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regime.

Vanguard president Michael Hayes said, “This rhetoric does absolutely nothing to help Israel-Palestine negotiations or relations. We feel this type of action serves to hinder the peace process domestically and abroad, and have made it our priority to take a stand to shift the tide of understanding.”

In fact, our understanding of antiSemitism has broadened in recent years to respond to new manifestations of “the world’s oldest hatred.” The former Soviet Union’s renowned refuse-

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been used by some officials, such as Bronx State Senator Ruben Diaz, to force a wedge between immigrant and LGBT communities. Diaz’s tactics are hurtful and divisive, and we should reject them and embrace the fight for justice with our immigrant family, friends, and neighbors.

Immigrant and LGBT concerns are often intertwined. To provide a few examples, LGBT asylum seekers sometimes face homophobia from the officers and judges reviewing their claims.

Bi-national, same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are treated differ-

www.gaycitynews.com

nik Natan Sharansky, now an Israeli human rights activist, explained that the Jewish state faces extreme critics in the West identifiable through a “3-D test” –– in that they demonize, delegitimize, and apply double standards to Israel, ones they would apply to no other country in the world. QAIA’s rhetoric and actions are consistent with that pattern of attack.

Siegebusters and QAIA have said nothing of the thousands of Syrian refugees who fled as Assad began gunning down his own citizens. They have uttered not a peep as Libya and Yemen have persecuted democratic reformers.

In a preemptive move to insulate themselves from charges of anti-Semitism, QAIA and Siege Busters note that some of their members are Jewish. Sherry Wolf, a self-described socialist and antiZionist Jewish member of Siegebusters, has invoked this Jewish insurance policy to inoculate the group against criticism it is fanning the flames of Jewish hatred.

There are gays who are closeted and homophobic. There are women who are misogynists. And, sadly, there are Jews who are anti-Semitic.

The post World War II definition of anti-Zionism — a euphemism for opposition to Israel’s right to exist — was

neatly captured in the late 1960s by the Austrian Jewish writer Jean Amery, who noted, “Anti-Zionism contains antiSemitism like a cloud contains a storm.”

When rising anti-Semitism burgeoned among left-wing Europeans in the late 19th century, the German Social Democrat August Bebel termed the affliction a “Socialism of Fools.” The misguided leftists associated with QAIA, unfortunately, follow in that tradition, besotted with the anti-Semitism of fools.

ently. Though some LGBT immigrants are benefiting from the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, many more would benefit from the DREAM Act, which will prevent the deportation of the best and bright-

immigrant communities makes sense.

Generation after generation of LGBT Americans has migrated here to pursue their dreams. Similarly, many of our immigrant neighbors, friends, and fami-

In fact, anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant discrimination are among the only types of discrimination still acceptable in the public discourse.

It is in the interest of both LGBT and immigrant communities to work together.

For LGBT individuals, immigrants are a potent reminder of our own struggles for acceptance and quality. For immigrants, the LGBT community can provide allies experienced in the struggle for justice.

Our futures are bound together and so is our liberation.

It is no mistake that xenophobic and homophobic vitriol often originates from the same sources. est LGBT youth, including my former student, to unfamiliar and often hostile countries.

Connecting the struggles of LGBT and

lies journeyed here to make New York the canvas for their dreams. It is no mistake that xenophobic and homophobic vitriol often originates from the same sources.

Benjamin Weinthal is a fellow at the Iran Human Rights Project of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Daniel Dromm, chair of the New York City Council Immigration Committee, represents the 25th District in Queens.

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22 jun - 5 jul 2011

Perspective /95 Queerness, Shame, and the Fall of Anthony Weiner

BY NATHAN RILEY

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ueer is the new camp, the spirit that challenges convention but does so with a solidarity aimed at warding off moralistic attacks. Queerness currently rivets the American imagination –– both in its open and ostentatious form and in the other more closeted and besieged sense.

Queerness permeates the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but another queerness relentlessly grabbed headlines until it imploded under the glare of bright lights.

Congressman Anthony Weiner, patently straight, had sexual conversations with women so queer they seemingly involved no touching. Weiner’s time in the closet prevented him from forging the selfknowledge he would need to defend his private life. Once uncovered, he resorted to a cowardly –– but eminently understandable –– lie.

The lie proved fatal. Chivied by a riot of ridicule, scorn, and Republican attacks, it didn’t take long for Weiner to lose the support of his Democratic colleagues, who concluded he must be drummed out of the party. The lie exposed Weiner’s shame, and no sustainable defense can be mounted for a sex life by conceding the behavior is wrong, inexcusably so. A demand for privacy, the freedom to choose, and the right to pleasure represent the only effective counter in responding to a breach of others’ standards of respectability.

Straights in our society suffer when they don’t recognize their queerness. They should examine LGBT history for lessons on standing up to public hostility aimed at private lives that are outside the norms.

The risk that our electronic communications, which we value so highly, will turn out to betray our privacy means that even straights might well think about how prepared they are to come out.

Some have, including those that built their own civil rights movement –– the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.

Among that group’s activities are consciousness-raising sessions reminiscent of the liberationist self-help/ mutual support efforts of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The now former congressman could have profited from an acquaintance with these pioneers.

Unlike Weiner, fashion designer McQueen reveled in his fabulousness, while adhering to the highest professional standards with elegant and daring designs. The Met exhibition opens with his “bumsters” –– formal clothes that transformed women into images of high-class gentlemen. Tuxedo-like clothing stretched the torso, as McQueen explained, to draw the eye to the “most erotic part of anyone’s body” –– the base of the spine, a pleasure zone shared by men and women. This relentlessly self-promoting artist managed, with that genteel phrase, to honor respectability even while employing the vulgar word “bum.” Mastering the art of mixing earthiness with the demure is something learned while coming out.

That verbal juxtaposition also offers a glimpse of McQueen’s mind. It is a mistake to conclude that his suicide meant his life was troubled and sad. He had fun.

He invited the public into his world. The designer’s mind embraced unisex utopianism; he was convinced gender-bending and sexual adventurism have a global appeal. His vision of the fabulous, while accessible to all cultures, was never tame.

It always preserved the provocative quality once associated with camp, now labeled queer.

McQueen was unabashedly gay; his designs, consistently revelatory. Unlike the output of most haute courtier houses, his clothing revealed his life. He was more explicit about queer sexuality than his competitors, and his clothes piqued the curiosity of the artistic world and its public. He devised dresses that draped to the body’s natural shape and others that confined it. Some of his clothes show an easy familiarity with S & M practices.

On NewYorker.com, Uma Thurman has posted a video offering a taste what the Met gallery-goers see. Both anarchic liberty and constraint are coupled with transgressive gender expression to create a daredevil combination of the alluring and the creepy.

McQueen’s ability to own the creepiness is crucial. The adjective creepy was a very common reaction to news of Weiner’s constant sexting. But one person’s creepiness is another’s pleasure.

Next to Alexander McQueen and the

bad boy tradition of British fashion, Anthony Weiner is cautious and controlled. Yet those long-secret sexual conversations were clearly a vital part of his life. It is best to avoid medicalizing his habits by labeling them compulsive.

Let’s say instead that he is a middleaged man who likes to talk dirty. His tears and frustration as the scandal unfolded suggest these pleasures were important and being deprived of this fun made him panic. Yet Weiner’s lying pointed up the shame he felt about that powerful pleasure.

There is nothing in the public record to suggests his sex life was more or less lurid than that practiced by many of our friends. It was surely more conventional than McQueen’s sadomasochistic costumes at the Met. Yet once his falsehood was exposed, Weiner was left defenseless. The Queens lawmaker collapsed under the pressure, a fate that must rankle deeply a man who thought of himself as a macho practitioner of an aggressive politics. Able to attack, he wilted when others pounced.

Weiner’s resignation is a victory for the bad guys. The endless ways the media called him a “dick” because his name is Weiner is bullying masquerading as morality. These headlines will only teach swaggering adolescents how to act in a despicable manner. Weiner was harried by schoolyard taunts uttered by scolds who lack the good will to admit sexting is a harmless pastime.

In the final shots of Weiner before his office announced he was entering rehab, he looked haunted –– another queer hounded by thoughtless puritans who think they have a monopoly on sexual morality. If he were in school, we would seek a safe space for him. Rehab, he apparently thought, offered that, and perhaps the defense he was unable to make for himself.

Online, Bill Maher and Jane Lynch, the bad guy gym teacher on “Glee,” give a dramatic reading of a Weiner sext, pointing up its utter innocuousness. Weiner enjoys pardonable pleasures –– getting flattery about the size of his penis, expounding on his love of fellatio, and more than a sprinkling of Borscht Belt humor. His remark

about a Jewish woman who enjoys sucking has a long history. Few sensible people repeat these jokes any more, but they are not anti-Semitic –– they are Jewish. His conversation is no more ribald than any chatter between two friends enjoying a bawdy moment.

Weiner should have come out fighting.

Rehab is about changing ingrown habits that are harmful, though therapy certainly could help disentangle his real problems from the illusory ones steeped in shame and guilt. Had he stood up to make the case that his behavior was and deserved to be private, Weiner would have delivered on Alexander McQueen’s vision. The designer considered himself a harbinger of values that would flourish in the 21st century. His exhibition and his imagination push the envelope. Weiner had a chance to share that chapter in history. Instead, a thoughtless Victorianism has claimed another scalp.

Making that case, to be sure, would not have been easy. Weiner was a thorn in the side of those Democrats eager to cooperate with the Republicans. His fervent agitating for a single-payer health care plan antagonized those in his party who felt the president was already pushing them too far. Weiner was eloquent in making the case, as FDR did nearly 80 years before, that ideas from the left are political realism during a time of earthshaking economic crisis. Weiner’s disdain for bipartisanship was, ironically, the Achilles heel in his relationship with fellow Democrats. It would be good for the LGBT community and for Democrats if Weiner stayed active and unashamed.

“Bill Clinton got a blowjob and didn’t resign,” one posting on Queerty read.

Republican Larry Craig solicited an undercover cop in an airport men’s room and didn’t resign. Ditto for the GOP’s David Vitter, who hooked up with DC prostitutes.

Weiner’s banishment should make all queers uncomfortable. Queer theory, philosopher Morris Kaplan explained, “unsettles conventional modes of organizing sex and alerts us to the risk” of reverting to “patterns of exclusion” while seeking equality and respectability.

There’s no reason to cheer –– or even smirk –– at Anthony Weiner’s exclusion.

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that word –– equality –– it implies much more. Because the nation itself aspires to liberty, equality, fraternity. It’s carved in stone on all the public buildings. You see it a hundred times a day. In France, equality implies a horizon beyond the straitjacket of legal rights. It is social, cultural, political, and philosophical.

Not so much in America. Still, I shouldn’t rain on anybody’s parade.

We’re creeping forward. Sooner or later, we’ll win marriage rights across the board. People will get hitched, and when, as I suspect, society doesn’t throw roses, we’ll wake-up, reconsider our illusions, want more. And queer kids looking from het couples to gay couples may well shake their heads in disbelief and reject them both as prehistoric and gross. They should have

that chance to dump it all. Imagine some new way to live their lives. Yeah, I can celebrate that.

saving my pride, from p.91

in Paris this year is “For equality: in 2011 we march, in 2012 we vote.”

That’s more like it. No beseeching. No excuses. No blab. Demanding directly what they want. Even if it is equality.

Aline and Stephanie talked mostly about marriage equality and wanting kids. But in France, when you use

Lesbians! Dykes! Gay women. Get your rrriot on at the Dyke March, Saturday, June 25 at 5 p.m., leaving from 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue after gathering half a block west at Bryant Park. Guys support from the sidelines.

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AT THE BEACH Mentoring Our Youth

Live Out Loud, which works to inspire and motivate LGBT youth by connecting them with adult career mentors, hosts its annual Pride in the Hamptons event. This early evening cocktail party will include dancing as well as hors d’oeuvres by Brent Newsom Caterer. The home of Bruce T. Sloane, 21 North Bay Ln., East Hampton. Jun. 25, 6-8:30 p.m. Tickets begin at $125 at liveoutloud.info; $150 at the door.

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PERFORMANCE Amanda Lepore Live

In an evening of dancing and performance, Amanda Lepore headlines a show including appearances by Ana Matronic, Kat DeLuna, Cazwell, Neon Hitch, the Ones, DeLuka featuring Cherie Lily, Roxy Cottontail, Bishi, and Alienation. The DJs spinning tunes before showtime are Jon Jon Battles, Johnny Dynell, and Bill Coleman. Highline Ballroom, 431 W. 16th St., 6 p.m. Showtime is 8 p.m. Admission is $20; $30 for VIP access at dworld. us; $25 at the door.

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In Their Very Own Famous Words

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NIGHTLIFE Rapture on the River

Heritage of Pride, producers of Manhattan’s Pride Week events, hosts “Rapture on the River: A Women’s Dance.” The first hour, 3–4 p.m., offers two-for-one drinks along with comic performers, after which the event switches into full-party mode with DJ’s Susan Levine and Mary Mac getting the gals onto the dance floor.

This year, for the first time, there will be a wet T-shirt contest, offering a $250 grand prize. Pier 54, 13th St. at the West Side Hwy. Jun. 25, 3-11 p.m. Tickets are $25; $75 for VIP access, including an after-party at tinyurl.com/3jytx2b or 800-494-8497.

General admission is $35 at the door.

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FornabaioVoss hosts a colossal Gay Pride beach party, an Aussie-style Bondi

Pier Dance: Jun. 26

Beach Bash, on historic Governors Island. Internationally renowned DJs Phil Romano (Rome) and Hector Romero (Montreal) spin for an expected crowd of 4,000 party revelers as they gin the crowd up for a surprise performance by Olivia Newton John and a spectacular firework display over the East River.

Admission price includes the roundtrip ferry ride launching every five minutes from 11 South St. at the East River, beginning at 6 p.m. Tickets range from $50 general admission to $199 for full party access. Purchase tickets at showclix. com/event/bondi.

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Playgirl: It’s Not Just a Magazine

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Daniel Nardicio turns a new Lexington Avenue duplex venue into an opulent version of the Playgirl Mansion. With scandalous shotboys, Playgirl dancers, and a clothing-optional policy, Nardicio promises this will prove to be the sexiest event of Gay Pride Weekend. The party’s DJ is Johnny Dynell, and there’s a live show at

Olivia Newton John: Jun. 25

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Mario Cantone, Gina Gershon, and Sharon Gless are among those who will read from the memoirs of Susan Lucci, Justin Bieber, Cher, Dolly Parton, Ivana Trump, Madonna, and Elizabeth Taylor. Gramercy Theater, 127 E. 23rd St. Jun. 25, 7:30 p.m. The Gramercy space will be transformed into a cabaret setting, with tables and full bar service. Tickets are $25-40; $125 for a preshow reception with the performers, at SpinCyclenyc.com or 212-352-3101.

Pride March: Jun.26

1 a.m. 30 Lexington Ave., btwn. 23rd & 24th St. Jun. 25, 10 p.m.-3 a.m. Tickets are $40 at tinyurl.com/6cvjn9t; $50 at the door.

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SUN.JUN.26

PRIDE Fifth Avenue’s Lavender Line

The annual LGBT Pride March, likely the largest in the world, steps off from Fifth Ave. at 36th St. at noon, and proceeds south to Christopher St. at Greenwich St. To find the group you wish to march with or don’t want to miss seeing from the sidelines, visit nycpride.org/march.php. The grand marshals this year are Dan Savage and Terry Miller, creators of the “It Gets Better” video campaign aimed at combating suicide, especially among vulnerable LGBT youth; the Reverend Pat Bumgardner, pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church NY; and the Imperial Court of NY. More details at nycpride.org.

Pridefest

The annual LGBT street fair brings bring together local residents and families, community leaders, area business owners, and thousands of out-of-town visitors to celebrate pride in the street. Hudson St. btwn. Abingdon Sq. & W. 14th St. Jun. 26, 11: a.m.-7 p.m. More information at nycpride.org.

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The Pier Dance

Heritage of Pride closes Pride Week with the annual Dance on the Pier, born out of a time when LGBT persons could not dance openly and proudly together.

It is a protest set to music, a celebration set to the city skyline and riverfront and a reminder of how far we’ve come. The first hour, 2-3 p.m. offers two-for-one drink specials. Dance music will be provided by DJ Lina and DJ Vito Fun, and their will be an early live performance by Wynter Gordon.

Pier 54, 13th St. at the West Side Hwy., 2-10:30 p.m., with fireworks over the

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of stars with Marilyn!, a retrospective of 14 choice films from Marilyn Monroe’s tragically abridged career. The series’ selections, all presented in 35mm prints, offer a chance to appreciate the actress’ complexity and evergreen lovability.

The starlet boasted many top collaborations and worked with directors Cukor, Hawks, Huston, Mankiewicz, Preminger, and Wilder—a list of greats who cannily realized that no matter what else they put on screen, eyes would be drawn magnetically to Marilyn. Presented as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s BAMcinématek. BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. at Ashland Pl. Jul. 1-8, 10, 14-17. Complete screening and ticket information at bam.org.

jun 26, from p.96

Hudson bringing the festivities to a close.

Tickets are $75 at tinyurl.com/3jytx2b or 800-494-8497; $125 at the door.

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CABARET Just Justin

Singer, songwriter, and performance artist Justin Vivian Bond, one half of the performance duo Kiki and Herb, among many, many credits, has won Obie, Bessie, and Ethyl Eichelberger Awards and been nominated for a Tony. He brings his solo cabaret show to Joe’s Pub, inside the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., btwn. Fourth St. & Astor Pl. Jun. 26, 9:30 p.m. Admission is $25 at joespub.com or 212-967-7555. For a table reservation, with a two-drink or $12 food minimum, call 212-539-8778.

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Gay Marshall presents “Piaf: Queen of Heart,” interpreting the beloved French icon as a versatile powerhouse of heartwarming and heartbreaking emotion, full of personality and humor. Feinstein’s At Loews Regency, 540 Park Ave. at 61st St. Jun. 26, 8:30 p.m. The cover charge is $30-$50, with a $25 food and drink minimum. For reservations, visit feinsteinsattheregency.com or 212-339-4095.

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PERFORMANCE Free Rufus!

k.d. lang: Jul.3

Rufus Wainwright appears with the New York City Opera and pianist Kevin Murphy and will premier excerpts from his original opera, “Prima Donna,” as well as performing his favorite arias. World Financial Center Winter Garden Theater. Jun. 28, 7 p.m. Part of the tenth annual River to River Festival. For information on other events, visit rivertorivernyc.com.

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FILM Maryilyn!

BAMcinématek celebrates the star

k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang open up the 20th season of the Catskill’s “Belleayre Festival.” lang will perform her current hit “Sing It Loud,” among other audience favorites, including “Hallelujah.” Belleayre Mountain in Highmount, New York, just off Route 28, 37 miles west of Thruway Exit 19 at Kingston. Jul. 3, 8 p.m. Tickets are $25-$97 at belleayremusic.org, where you can also find complete information on the festival and directions to the site.

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COMEDY Lesbians Who Laugh

“Dykes on Mics,” hosted by Amy Beckerman, named “One of the One Hundred Women We Love” by GO magazine, welcomes Cara Kilduff (Here TV’s “Hot Gay Comics”) and Jessica Halem (Logo TV). L.I., the sexiest bartender in town, will mix drinks all night long. RF Lounge, 531 Hudson St. at Charles St. Jul. 6, 8 p.m. No cover charge.

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Sizzlin’ Summer Stand-UP

Bob Montgomery hosts a new edition of “Homo Comicus,” tonight starring Brad Loekle, Jason Stuart, Harmonica Sunbeam, and Emma Willmann.

Gotham Comedy Club, 208 W. 23rd St. Jul. 6, 8:30 p.m. There is a $20 cover charge, with a two-drink minimum. Reservations at 212-367-9000.

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Brad Loekle’s “Electro Shock Therapy Hour” celebrates the Fourth with Jessimae (“The Tyra Banks Show”), Van Popplenon (TruTV), and the musical comedy duo Mel & El. Therapy, 348 W. 52nd St., 10 p.m. No cover charge, and $7 cosmos all night.

PERFORMANCE She Can Turn the World on With Her Jokes

“The Judy Show” is a new comedy starring Judy Gold, in which this funny lady takes a hilarious look at her life through the lens of the classic sitcoms of her youth.

With multimedia, original music, laughter, and love, Gold shows how she balances family and ambition with a little help from her favorite TV shows of the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. The music and book are written

by Gold and her longtime collaborator Kate Moira Ryan. The DR2 Theatre, 103 E 15th St., just east of Union Square. Mon., Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Tue., 7 p.m.; Sat., 2 p.m. Limited engagement. Tickets begin at $65 at telecharge.com or 212-239-6200.

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MUSIC k.d. in the Catskills

TELEVISION Hope and Wholeness

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“In the Life,” public television’s LGBT newsmagazine presents two segments tonight. In “A Message of Hope: Gospel Music About HIV & AIDS,” the show profiles Messengers of Hope, an Oakland gospel choir that engages African-American churches in conversation about the continuing epidemic. In “Bringing Your Whole Self to Work,” “In the Life” looks at the surprising fact that despite inaction in Washington on employment protections for LGBT Americans, the corporate sector has emerged as an important ally in guaranteeing fairness in the workplace. WNET, channel 13, Jun. 26, 10:30 p.m.; Jun. 27, 12:30 a.m.; Jun. 28, 3 a.m. WLIW, channel 21, Jun. 27, 12:30 a.m.

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COMEDY Independently Funny

Marilyn Monroe: Jul. 1

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